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SATURDAY  PAPERS 

ESSAYS   ON   LITERATURE    FROM 
The  Literary  Review 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

ESSAYS  ON  LITERATURE 

FROM 

The  Literary  Review 

THE    FIRST    VOLUME    OF    SELECTIONS    FROM 

The  Literary  Review  of 
The  New  York  Evening  Post 

BY 

HENRY   SEIDEL   CANBY 

WILLIAM    ROSE  'JBENET 

AMY   LOVEMAN 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1921 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,    1920  AND   1921 
BY   THE   NEW   YORK   EVENING   POST,   INC. 

COPYRIGHT,    1921 
BY    THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 


Set  up  and  Printed.     Published  November,  1921. 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED   STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PREFACE 

WE  HAVE  tried  vainly  to  classify  these 
essays.  They  will  follow  no  order,  progress 
by  no  logical  development  of  thought,  be- 
cause they  were  written  each  in  its  time  and 
place,  at  a  moment  of  irony,  or  anger,  or 
delight,  or  illumination.  And  yet  we  be- 
lieve that  this  book  has  unity.  It  contains 
a  view  of  literature  and  life  which  is  sincere 
and  perfectly  definite.  Although  the  prod- 
uct of  several  minds,  it  represents  but  a  single 
philosophy  of  good  writing  and  practicable 
art.  It  is  a  literary  program  in  parcels  in- 
stead of  in  bulk. 

THE  AUTHORS. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

RED  BRICK  LITERATURE 1 

WHY  DON'T  THEY  STOP? ,      7 

THE  Two  AMERICAS 15 

NOVELS  NOWADAYS  23 

THE  PLAIN  PERSON  31 

To  THE  GENERAL  READER —     37 

PROSPERO  AND  THE  "PICTURES" ,    43 

SHAMEFACED  ART  49 

IGNORANT  ART    55 

SLOVENLY  PETER  AND  DAPPER  SAM 61 

"Is  IT  WHAT  OUR  READERS  WANT?" 67 

LITERARY  REVIVALISM   73 

THE  MASQUERADING  TRACT  79 

ON  LITERARY  STRUCTURE  85 

THE  YOUNG  REALISTS  93 

ON  REVIEWING  99 

A  SERMON  FOR  REVIEWERS  105 

PATRONS  AND  PATRONAGE Ill 

COTERIES   117 

How  CLASSICS  ARE  MADE  123 

PERNICIOUS  LITERATURE   .  .  129 


RED  BRICK  LITERATURE 

You  can  readily  note  the  effect  of  too  much 
city  dwelling  on  a  man,  and  you  can  almost 
as  easily  tell  when  too  much  city  dwelling  lies 
behind  a  book.  The  effect  is  similar,  except 
that  the  man  may  get  over  it,  while  the  book 
cannot:  it  is  finished. 

The  signs  of  too  much  red  brick,  too  much 
granite  and  steel,  too  much  roar  and  rattle 
in  a  book  are  unmistakable,  especially  too 
much  red  brick.  The  overurbanized  book  is 
intelligent,  its  thought  moves  quickly,  it  is 
vivid,  it  is  clever,  and  sometimes  smart.  Its 
style  is  nervous,  and  though  it  may  be  bad,  it 
is  never  dull.  But  dust  gets  into  the  lungs  of 
the  cockney  book  and  produces  a  thousand 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

tiny  irritations  that  prickle  out  in  oversen- 
sitized  words.  The  never-ceasing  patter  of 
hurrying  humanity,  the  crash  and  groan  of 
machines,  make  the  authors  irritable,  and 
their  books  are  irritable.  We  have  now  a 
school  of  irritable  poetry,  and  we  are  getting 
a  school  of  irritable  fiction.  In  the  irritable 
novel  every  one  is  disagreeable  (including 
the  author),  no  one  is  virtuous  or  wants  to 
be,  breakfast  conversations  consist  chiefly  of 
sneers,  and  nasty  smells  and  ugly  sights  are 
as  common  as  fresh-smelling  linen  in  Vic- 
torian homes.  In  irritable  poetry  the  phrases 
"I  am  weary,"  "I  am  angry,"  "I  hate,"  "I 
am  bored"  recur  with  some  regularity.  The 
poems  themselves  are  swift  successions  of 
painful  images  like  sparks  of  anger  shot  out 
by  a  departing  pedestrian  whose  foot  has 
been  trod  on  in  the  crowd.  The  utterance 

is  broken  and  feverish  like  conversation  in  a 

2 


RED   BRICK   LITERATURE 

packed  and  swaying  surface  car.     There  is 
no  clear  beginning  and  seldom  an  end. 

In  red  brick  literature  there  is  also  a  curi- 
ous lack  of  purpose,  like  the  apparent  lack 
of  any  important  purpose  in  so  much  swarm- 
ing, chattering  city  life.  The  poetry  is  ma- 
terial for  poetry  merely:  vivid,  tensely  vivid 
lines,  fragments  that  record  the  unpleasant 
impact  of  sensations  upon  a  mind  made  sen- 
sitive by  jars,  rattles,  and  inescapable  contact 
with  millions  of  men.  It  has  the  inconsecu- 
tiveness  of  a  plunge  into  a  subway  for  a  ride 
to  the  next  station,  or  crossing  Broadway  at 
Forty-second  Street.  The  novels,  too,  are 
purposeless  in  any  large  sense — vivid  tran- 
scripts of  experiences  that  are  typical  of 
nothing  but  the  unhappiest  of  a  thousand 
apartments,  narratives  where  the  energy  of 
the  author  goes  into  sensitized  studies  of  be- 
havior, precisely  as  one  may  spend  a  roaring 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

subway  trip  focussing  the  mind  upon  some 
face  across  the  way,  until  the  last  wrinkle  or 
blotch  has  found  a  word  to  describe  it. 

Red  brick  literature,  indeed,  tends  always 
to  the  morbid,  if  we  use  morbid  in  its  usual 
modern  meaning,  a  brooding  on  the  evidence 
of  the  senses.  Or  it  escapes  morbidity  by  be- 
ing smart  or  sensational.  It  needs  air,  space, 
light,  repose,  meditation,  solitude. 

We  do  not  complain  of  cities.  They  are  at 
the  worst  necessary  evils  and  at  the  best  the 
testing  grounds  of  the  intellect.  But  taken  in 
continued,  unremitted  doses,  become  a  daily, 
yearly  habit,  city  life  is — not  fatal,  for  the 
thought  of  some  illustrious  London  cockneys, 
and  even  more  distinguished  Parisians, 
makes  us  pause  at  that  word — but  overstimu- 
lative  to  the  literary  person.  It  makes  him 
unduly  conscious  of  an  ego  which  minute  by 
minute  is  rubbed  and  scraped  by  the  egos  of 


RED   BRICK   LITERATURE 

so  many  others.  It  makes  him  unduly  con- 
cerned with  mediocrity,  since  where  there  is 
not  even  a  bench  without  a  man  or  a  woman 
sitting  on  it  mediocrity  is  forced  upon  him. 

We  do  not  advocate  a  migration  from 
Greenwich  Village  to  the  suburbs  or  the 
prairies.  By  no  means.  It  is  better  to  have 
lived  and  lost  the  power  to  write  truly  than 
never  to  have  lived  in  search  of  it  at  all.  But 
let  these  writers  sometimes  pack  up  their 
bags  and  get  out  of  the  streets,  out  of  the 
studios,  out  of  the  subway,  off  and  apart 
from  human  cliques  and  congeries  and  the 
noisy  mass  of  mankind.  The  best  criticism 
of  many  a  novel  is  a  beech  woods  in  March, 
and  a  thundering  sea  on  a  misty  beach  is  the 
answer  to  much  febrile  poetry.  Americans, 
apparently,  grow  sentimental  when  they  have 
too  much  nature,  if,  indeed,  the  writers  about 

the  untamed  West  can  ever  be  said  really  to 
5 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

experience  nature  at  all:  they  grow  neurotic 
rapidly  with  too  little.  Lilacs  in  the  back- 
yard of  a  tenement,  starved  trees  in  a  worn 
park,  are  pretty  and  pathetic,  but  poor  sub- 
stitutes for  the  bay  and  cedar  of  a  Connecti- 
cut hillside  or  the  pines  of  Arizona  moun- 
tains.  He  who  loves  the  city  must  leave  it, 
and  leave  it  often,  or  he  will  love  it  neither 
wisely  nor  well. 

H.  S.  C. 


WHY  DON'T  THEY  STOP? 

WHY  are  there  so  many  able  English  novel- 
ists, and  so  few  really  distinguished  American 
novelists?  It  is  because  the  American 
writer  will  not  pay  the  price  of  distinction, 
being  too  concerned  with  prices  of  a  different 
character. 

We  are  all  weary  of  the  economic  inter- 
pretation of  everything,  including  literature, 
because  economics  usually  have  to  be  ex- 
plained by  the  soul  of  man  or  the  climate. 
But  it  seems  that  the  social  economics  of  the 
United  States  does  explain  much  in  the  pres- 
ent status  of  American  literature. 

The  American  novelist  begins  his  career 
with  a  "crude  but  powerful"  novel  that  does 
not  succeed,  and  a  few  well-made  short 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

stories  that  do.  Two  years  later  his  mind 
has  cleared,  his  eye  sharpened,  his  pen  grown 
more  skilful.  He  writes  a  novel  that  serial- 
izes successfully,  disposes  of  20,000  copies, 
and  then  sells  his  story  to  the  melting  pot  of 
the  movies  for  a  very  substantial  check.  His 
six  months'  work  has  brought  him  what  for 
most  professional  men  would  be  two  years' 
good  income.  His  name  is  known,  his  mar- 
ket is  ready,  all  he  has  to  do  is  to  write.  Skill 
he  possesses  and  a  knowledge  of  his  public. 
Only  his  art  is  incomplete.  It  lacks  finish,  it 
lacks  depth,  it  lacks  most  of  all  the  maturity 
that  comes  from  ardent,  unremitting  labor; 
and  he  knows  it.  His  style  is  good;  it  is  not 
excellent.  It  expresses  his  imaginings ;  it  will 
not,  like  a  great  style,  preserve  them.  Why 
doesn't  he  stop  large-scale  production,  and 
learn  to  write? 

This  is  the  turning  point,  and  nine  out  of 
8 


WHY    DON'T   THEY   STOP? 

ten  able  Americans  turn  to  the  left.  They 
increase  facility;  they  do  not  intensify  their 
art.  They  lay  hands  upon  more  of  the  pub- 
lic; they  do  not  tighten  their  grip.  They 
write  more  books,  but  not  better  books. 

Why  don't  they  stop?  Since  they  belong 
to  a  nation  of  speculators,  why  are  they  so 
unwilling  to  speculate  with  their  popularity? 
Why  do  they  invest  their  capital  of  reputa- 
tion dully  in  the  routine  of  a  standardized 
output,  instead  of  using  it  to  produce  some- 
thing new,  something  better,  which  will  bring 
them  satisfaction  as  well  as  cash?  Are  they 
timid,  these  captains-of-fiction,  or  are  they 
more  enamored  of  luxury  than  of  their  pro- 
fession? 

Neither  implication  is  wholly  true,  but 
there  is  truth  in  both.  If  Geoff ry  Wildairs, 
the  successful  author,  makes  $10,000  a  year, 
he  contracts  obligations  in  the  form  of  auto- 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

mobiles,  clubs,  and  a  taste  for  Southern 
climates  in  February  that  require  fifteen  thou- 
sand to  satisfy  them;  and  there  is  no  sure 
way  of  making  ten  thousand  grow  to  fifteen 
thousand  while  perfecting  one's  art,  while, 
having  learned  to  write  well,  learning  to 
write  better.  Therefore  he  pursues  the 
nymph  of  luxury  instead  of  the  goddess  of 
fame,  and  finds  her  quite  as  elusive,  and 
knows  her  to  be  less  excellent. 

No  one  asks  the  American  novelist  to 
starve  like  his  Grub  Street  predecessor.  For 
Geoffry  Wildairs  and  his  fellows  that  is  quite 
unnecessary.  We  grant  him  five,  ten,  even 
fifteen  thousand  a  year  as  a  "living  wage"; 
and  his  attempt  to  dig  in,  to  consolidate  his 
art,  is  not  likely,  as  publishing  goes  nowa- 
days, to  cause  much,  if  any  diminution.  But 
he  must  say :  "I  have  enough  income  to  keep 

me  afloat;  now  for  good  work." 
10 


WHY    DON'T   THEY    STOP? 

Why  doesn't  he  say  it?  Is  the  profes- 
sional spirit  less  strong  in  America  than  in 
England  and  France?  Has  writing  with  us 
become  a  business,  with  the  code  of  a  busi- 
ness instead  of  a  profession  ?  Do  we  lack  the 
strength  of  resistance  which  alone  enables  a 
writer  to  write  for  sufficient  profits  from 
great  excellence,  instead  of  great  profits  from 
continuing  mediocrity?  For  it  is  weak  to 
write  a  "strong  novel" 'when  one  can  write  a 
good  one.  And  in  the  long  run  it  is  foolish. 
Not  even  in  this  heyday  of  short-story  and 
movie  profits  can  an  author  keep  up  with  a 
profiteer,  a  picture  star,  or  a  stock  manipu- 
lator. The  ultimate  luxury  is  ever  beyond 
his  reach.  He  may  achieve  four  bathrooms, 
but  scarcely  an  indoor  swimming  pool.  He 
may  own  two  cars  and  a  saddle  horse,  but 
three  and  a  stable  will  be  out  of  his  reach. 

When  the   money  begins   to   come   in   a 
11 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

steady  flow  instead  of  drop  by  drop,  when 
one's  name  goes  from  the  bottom  to  the 
top  of  the  column,  then  is  the  time  to  take 
counsel  with  perfection,  to  consult  the  de- 
sires of  the  spirit,  to  ask  whether  it  is  better 
to  be  the  author  of  five  good  books  or  ten 
thousand  facile  pages. 

There  are,  at  a  guess,  fifty  American 
novelists  making  this  year  incomes  so  large 
that  only  extravagance  can  spend  them.  Ten 
of  these  are  writing  precisely  what  their 
Lord  and  Maker  in  His  inscrutable  wisdom 
created  them  to  write.  Ten  are  convinced 
that  next  year  they  will  slow  down  produc- 
tion and  go  on  a  quality  instead  of  a  quantity 
basis.  Ten  have  hardened  their  hearts  and 
long  since  thrown  over  vain  regrets  for  what 
they  might  have  written.  Five  have  won 
through  to  a  success  they  never  expected  by 

doing  the  best  that  was  in  them,  let  come 
12 


WHY    DON'T   THEY    STOP? 

what  might.  And  the  rest,  however  high- 
hearted and  flippantly  cynical  in  public,  are 
familiar  with  the  dead  spaces  of  the  night 
when  there  is  gnashing  of  teeth  for  the  re- 
ward which  alone  tempts  them — the  reward 
of  a  durable  excellence — now  known  to  be 

forever  out  of  reach. 

H.  S.  C. 


13 


THE  TWO  AMERICAS 

AMERICA  as  the  novelist  sees  it  just  now  is  a 
very  confusing  country.  Indeed  it  is  not  one 
country  at  all,  but  two,  and  outwardly  they 
very  little  resemble  each  other. 

One  is  the  dun  America  and  the  other  is 
rosy  America.  The  dun  America  is  a  land 
of  back  yards,  spittoons,  Main  Streets,  ce- 
ment walks,  shiny  stiff  rooms,  and  ugliness 
everywhere.  It  is  inhabited  by  fearfully 
bourgeois  people,  whose  humor  is  confined 
to  "jollying,"  and  whose  life,  for  the  males, 
is  business,  and  either  drinking  or  fishing,  or 
both;  and  for  the  females,  gossip  or  bridge, 
or  both.  Its  range  of  interests  is  about  as 

broad  as  the  front  yard  and  as  long  as  Main 
15 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

Street,  no  longer.  When  it  goes  to  parties 
to  amuse  itself  it  is  either  barbarous  or  vul- 
gar or  stupid,  or  all  three  of  them.  Its  at- 
titude toward  international  politics  is  that  of 
1890,  its  opinion  of  labor  problems  dates 
from  before  the  industrial  revolution.  The 
prevailing  dunness  is  shot  through  with 
streaks  of  yellow  and  weak  violet,  but  dingy 
is  its  color,  dingy  its  soul. 

In  sharp,  in  impossible  contrast  is  rosy 
America.  This  is  a  land  of  hearty  villages 
and  vigorous  towns,  clean  and  prosperous, 
shrewd  and  homely,  kindly  and  in  the  best 
sense  aspiring.  It  is  a  land  of  quaint  wise 
age  and  nai've  youth.  It  is  humorous,  it  is 
energetic:  it  won  the  war  even  if  it  did  not 
fight  much  of  it,  saved  Europe  from  starving, 
and  showed  itself  capable  of  organization  as 
well  as  sacrifice.  It  is  a  common-sense  country, 

deeply  idealistic,  and  its  aesthetic  sense  has 
16 


THE    TWO   AMERICAS 

already  outrun  its  environment.  New  York 
amuses  it,  the  immigrants  do  not  dismay  it, 
its  "home  towns,"  with  all  their  imperfec- 
tions, it  adores. 

Which  is  the  true  America?  Which  are 
the  true  observers?  The  writers  who  give 
us  rosy  America  (if  we  exclude  the  senti- 
mentalists) are  intelligent  people,  good  to 
meet,  good  to  talk  with,  wise  and  humorous. 
They  have  been  a  little  too  fortunate  in  their 
own  lives  perhaps  for  absolute  clarity  of 
vision ;  but  they  convince  you  of  their  Amer- 
ica— are  they  not  of  it  I 

The  writers  who  write  of  dun  America,  on 
the  contrary,  are  usually  rebels  against  en- 
vironment, men  and  women  who  have  felt 
themselves  misfits  in  the  home  town,  misfits 
in  college,  critics  of  the  existing  order  wher- 
ever they  lived,  and  happy  nowhere.  They 

are  the  nomads  who  wander  from  oasis  to 
17 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

oasis,  their  horses  always  saddled,  their  ar- 
rows ever  bright. 

Are  there  then  rather  than  two  Americas 
only  two  states  of  mind,  two  sets  of  experi- 
ences, two  moods  of  observation  which  turn 
plain  America  into  sweetness  or  bile  ?  That 
is  a  conclusion  too  weak  to  stand  upon. 

For,  of  course,  the  two-sidedness  is  in 
America  as  well  as  in  the  observers.  The 
virtues  and  the  faults  are  both  there.  From 
the  window  one  sees  a  jumble  of  ugly  brick 
walls,  a  sky  tainted  by  coal  smoke,  signs  of- 
fensive in  vulgarity  as  in  ugliness.  Yet  be- 
neath is  a  good  sort  of  people  busy  support- 
ing families  that  are  cheery  as  often  as  mean 
minded,  as  often  interested  in  China,  child 
welfare,  good  books,  and  happy  conversation 
as  in  the  price  of  stocks,  the  sins  of  their 
neighbors,  and  alcohol.  In  short,  no  Main 

Street  is  just  as  it  looks  to  any  individual  at 
18 


THE   TWO   AMERICAS 

any  given  moment  of  mood  and  time.  But 
this  is  a  conclusion  too  platitudinous  to  rest 
upon. 

For  the  two  Americas  which  interest  us 
are  by  no  means  so  simple  as  the  ancient 
struggle  between  good  and  evil  that  goes  on 
in  every  village.  They  are  special  phases  of 
this  old  conflict  and  just  now  they  may  be 
denominated  city  and  town. 

The  city  in  America  has  gathered  to  itself 
sweetness  and  vigor;  it  has  sucked  from  the 
country  whence  all  strength  comes,  and  now 
goes  back  for  refreshment.  The  city  encour- 
ages breadth  of  thinking  and  living.  It  en- 
courages and  rewards  vitality.  But  it  is  the 
city  also  which  is  the  prime  vulgarizer,  which 
produces  the  man  without  angles  and  with- 
out home,  the  woman  without  occupation,  the 
life  without  individuality.  And  the  city  is 

master. 

19 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

The  town  is  slave.  It  apes  the  city  and 
apes  it  badly.  Its  vulgarity  is  second-best 
and  its  mediocrity  imitative.  Its  faults  are 
all  displayed  on  Main  Street,  like  cans  of  veg- 
etables in  a  grocer's  window.  City  faults  are 
easier  to  study  in  a  town  than  in  the  place 
of  their  origin  because  they  are  unrelieved 
and  cruder.  Yet  the  town  keeps  its  individu- 
ality, keeps  its  pride,  keeps  its  friendships.  It 
is  the  country  freshman  in  college,  with  big, 
hearty  hands,  and  a  big,  hearty  voice,  and 
a  big  heart  under  impossible  "college  cut" 
clothes,  acquiring  vices  that  when  he  is  more 
civilized  he  will  forget. 

The  American  soul  is  passing  from  the 
country  through  the  town  to  the  city,  and 
perhaps  back  to  the  town  and  on  to  the  coun- 
try again.  It  was  the  country  that  first  en- 
gaged our  novelists.  Then  it  was  the  city. 
20 


THE    TWO   AMERICAS 

Now,  for  a  while,  because  it  reveals  our  soul 
in  transition,  it  is  the  small  town.  The  rosy 
writers  on  the  whole  see  not  untruly.  The 
American  town  is  not  all  Main  Street,  and 
Main  Street  is  not  as  bad  as  it  is  painted,  or 
even  built.  Ugliness  is  a  phase  of  transition, 
like  the  unshaven  chin  on  Sunday  morning. 
The  city,  with  all  its  leadership  toward  light 
and  sweetness  of  living,  is  more  dangerous 
than  the  town  to  America. 

But  the  nomads  come  sweeping  down  upon 
our  complacencies  like  the  Arabs  and  the 
Scythians  that  Wells  describes,  restlessly  dis- 
content, stirring  up  our  fat  lives,  pricking 
illusions,  shooting  arrows  of  satire  down 
smug  streets.  They  disturb  us,  but  they  keep 
us  moving.  They  make  us  feel  the  dunness 
of  life  that  has  lost  the  simple  reality  of 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

interest  and  experience.  Now  that  the  In- 
dian and  the  pioneer  and  the  cowboy  have 
gone,  and  the  founders  have  become  stolid 
and  wealthy,  Main  Street  needs  them. 

H.  S.  C. 


22 


^NOVELS  NOWADAYS 


IT  is  no  unusual  thing  to  hear  at  any  dinner 
table  emphatically  derogatory  comment  from 
those  of  an  elder  and  more  discretionary  gen- 
eration upon  the  somewhat  embittering  sub- 
ject of  "novels  nowadays."  The  concomitant 
reminder  is  usually  (though  expressed  other- 
wise) of  the  delightfully  sedative  qualities  of 
the  great  Victorian  contributions  to  litera- 
ture. By  comparison  how  much  pleasanter, 
nobler,  and  so  on.  .  .  . 

But  the  novel  of  manners  was  a  dynamic 
force  in  the  Victorian  era.  Is  not  the  elder 
generation  looking  back  upon  its  great  hey- 
day rather  for  what  one  H.  A.  Taine  called 
"minute  details  and  practical  counsels"  than 

for  the  "imagination  and  dreams"  it  fur- 
23 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

nished  the  audience  of  its  own  period?  The 
vital  social  anger  of  Dickens  is  forgotten, 
perhaps,  in  approving  the  "delicacy  and  de- 
votion" of  his  heroes — the  gloomy  satire  of 
Thackeray  in  the  "quaintness"  of  an  Amelia 
Sedley.  It  is  all  so  odd  and  pleasant  and 
old-fashioned  and  far  away.  And  then  these 
authors  were  such  great  moralists. 

Where,  however,  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
are  loved  by  the  younger  generation  it  is  not 
for  any  such  stale  virtuousness ;  it  is  rather 
for  their  living  virtuosity,  their  wit,  sincerity, 
and  creative  power.  And  the  younger  gen- 
eration seeks  even  further. 

It  seeks  beneath  the  individual  conscious- 
ness, so  typical  of  all  human  nature,  into  the 
unconscious,  so  strongly  differentiated  in  each 
individual  by  impedimenta  of  early  influ- 
ence and  training.  Scientific  research  into 

human  motives  and  behavior  has  added  much 
24 


NOVELS    NOWADAYS 

to  our  knowledge  since  the  Victorian  era ;  all 
this  the  contemporary  writer  has  at  his  dis- 
posal. Many  are  beginning  to  profit  by  it. 
A  character's  motives  are  subject  to  a  more 
extended  survey;  the  casual  impressions  of 
the  individual  acquire  greater  momentous- 
ness.  A  deeper  sympathy  on  the  part  of  the 
author,  even  for  the  "villain  of  the  piece," 
is  increasingly  apparent. 

But  the  point  surely  is  that  we  live  to-day 
in  a  more  subjective  age.  It  is  an  age  of  the 
individual's  explanation  of  himself.  Author- 
ity, even  the  conventions  that  the  greatest  of 
the  Victorians  tacitly  accepted,  has  every- 
where been  called  into  question.  Mere  pres- 
entation of  life  as  a  panorama  above  which 
the  author  sits  like  a  god,  even  though  a 
sardonic  god,  upholding  certain  tables  of  the 
law,  has  taken  on  a  certain  taint  of  super- 
ficiality. The  picture  of  society  is  now  pre- 
25 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

sented  far  more  through  the  deep  reactions 
of  one  individual  than  as  a  conglomerate 
whole  where  a  great  variety  of  interesting 
creatures  move,  weaving  "plots,"  restricted 
by  the  necessity  of  not  stepping  out  of  their 
own  "characters"  in  the  scheme. 

In  short,  the  author  has  descended  from 
Olympus.  Life  is  approached  merely  through 
the  eyes  of  one  particularly  sophisticated  in- 
dividual in  it.  For  a  certain  gain  there  is 
usually  corresponding  loss.  But  the  methods 
of  approach  in  novel-writing  are  changing, 
because  the  times  have  changed.  It  is  rather 
futile  to  expect  life  to  be  static — to  expect 
the  methods  of  one  age  to  be  the  same  as 
that  of  another  that  is  past. 

If  a  comparison  is  demanded  as  to  "great- 
ness" perhaps  Emerson's  squirrel  may  an- 
swer for  us,  as  he  did  to  the  mountain,  "If  I 

cannot  carry  forests  on  my  back,  neither  can 
26 


NOVELS   NOWADAYS 

you  crack  a  nut."  Joyce's  "Portrait  of  the 
Artist  as  a  Young  Man"  need  hardly  be 
damned  because  it  is  not  the  "Hamlet"  of 
Shakespeare.  It  is  an  attempt  to  do  some- 
thing entirely  different. 

Again,  if  the  question  of  the  "morality" 
of  the  modern  novelist  prove  a  burning  one, 
as  it  ever  has  and  ever  will,  a  calm  consider- 
ation of  the  great  novels  of  the  world's  liter- 
ature might  greatly  disillusionize  the  ortho- 
dox. And  if  the  Anglo-Saxon  novel  be 
growing  more  European — a  consummation 
we  hardly  dare  hope  for — why,  after  all, 
those  novels  that  the  European  viewpoint  has 
produced  are  not  altogether  negligible.  Our 
idea  in  America  of  the  function  of  the  novel- 
ist can  stand  a  little  improvement. 

For  how  does  Taine  deal  with  the  "moral- 
ity" of  the  great  Victorians?  "It  is  there- 
fore to  ignore  man,  to  reduce  him  ...  to 
27 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

an  aggregate  of  virtues  and  vices;  it  is  to  lose 
sight  in  him  of  all  but  the  exterior  and  social 
side;  it  is  to  neglect  the  inner  and  natural 
element.  You  will  find  the  same  fault  in 
English  criticism,  always  moral,  never  psy- 
chological .  .  ." 

Perhaps  it  is  for  this  reason,  neglect  of 
that  "inner  and  natural  element,"  that 
"novels  nowadays"  have  been  tending  so  pro- 
nouncedly toward  autobiographical  analysis. 
More  and  more  the  psychological,  among 
the  books  that  matter;  less  and  less  the 
"moral." 

And  the  interest  of  the  younger  generation 
in  this  trend  is  both  healthy  and  hopeful.  It 
is  a  sounding  for  greater  depth.  The  old- 
style  novel  of  manners  was  not  enough.  Even 
its  worthiest  successors  in  our  own  period 
pall.  The  seine  of  literature  is  let  down 

deeper   beneath   life's   apparent   level,    into 
28 


NOVELS    NOWADAYS 

further  fathoms  of  the  sea  of  motive  and 
complex  impulse.  Thus  peculiar  things  are 
dredged  to  the  surface ;  some  things,  indeed, 
at  which  the  elder  generation  shudders  and 
from  which  it  hastily  averts  its  eyes.  For 
the  author  does  not  moralize  about  them,  he 
seems  only  to  seek  a  more  universal  under- 
standing. Yet  throughout  the  history  of 
literature  this  has  been  the  guiding  motive 
of  the  true  creator.  His  main  problem  is 
simply  to  render  all  human  action  as  intel- 
ligible as  possible  in  the  light  of  his  own 

time. 

W.  R.  B. 


29 


THE   PLAIN   PERSON 

WHAT  does  the  plain,  everyday  person  want 
in  his  books? 

He  wants  "good  English."  Not  shimmer- 
ing experiments  with  rare  words;  nor  daring 
combinations  of  clauses  that  explode  into 
dashes  and  dots.  Not  long  words  solemnly 
arranged — he  has  long  since  outgrown  re- 
spect for  that  kind  of  pedantry.  Not,  by  any 
means,  halting,  imperfect  sentences,  with  bad 
grammar  in  them,  nor  sloppy  writing  that 
means  two  things  at  once.  These  last  are 
precisely  what  he  does  not  want.  He  desires 
good  English,  and  he  does  not  have  to  be  a 
stylist  in  order  to  know  when  he  gets  it. 

He  also  wants  life  as  it  is,  or  life  as  he 

would  like  to  have  it. 
31 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 


If  it  is  to  be  life  as  it  is,  then  he  desires  life 
as  he  knows  it.  He  does  not  favor  pictures 
of  societies  more  intellectual  than  intelligent, 
where  all  the  talk  is  of  art,  technique,  motifs, 
tastes,  suppressed  ambitions,  and  compressed 
experiences.  He  does  not  want  to  read  of 
people  whose  work,  play,  and  love  are  never 
just  what  they  seem  to  be,  but  always  signi- 
ficant socially  or  psychologically,  importing 
horrid  lessons  for  the  race  if  it  doesn't  watch 
out.  He  likes  his  sociology  straight,  when 
he  likes  it  at  all.  He  does  not  care  to  read 
of  families  where  tendencies  toward  sex  in- 
dulgence, hysteria,  hatred,  crime  break  out 
before  breakfast  and  devastate  the  household 
by  night.  He  is  perfectly  well  aware  of  such 
tendencies  in  himself  and  in  his  own  family, 
but  tries  with  some  success  to  hold  them  in 
check,  and  prefers  a  book  with  equal  self- 
restraint. 

32 


THE    PLAIN    PERSON 

He  craves  a  book  world  where  he  may  find 
all  the  intensely  real  things  he  sees  in 
glimpses  now  and  then  in  his  own  life,  but 
of  which  he  has  never  enough.  The  humors 
and  the  adventure  of  experience  in  odd  cor- 
ners. The  character,  good  and  bad,  that 
comes  out  like  colors  in  the  sunshine  at  crises. 
The  nobleness  of  life  that  he  admires,  the 
success  he  longs  for,  the  pathos  which  makes 
him  sorry,  the  tragedy  that  he  feels  under- 
lying, and  the  meanness  that  he  can  hate. 
These  things  he  knows  are  true,  and  he  likes 
to  read  of  them. 

But  if  it  is  not  to  be  the  truth  about  the 
world  he  knows,  then  he  wants  to  hear  of  the 
world  as  he  would  like  to  have  it — of  ro- 
mance. But  he  doesn't  wish  it  all  kisses  and 
tears  and  moral  platitudes.  Nor  all  wild  ex- 
ploits of  movie  heroes.  Nor  all  happy  tales 

of  silly  happy  people.     It  must  be  a  world 
33 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

where  a  man  can  take  his  common  sense  and 
a  woman  her  humor.  It  must  not  revolve  on 
a  movie  plot  designed  for  immigrants  and 
the  illiterate.  He  wants  to  read  of  a  life 
where  a  sensible  but  not  unromantic  person, 
who  is  neither  neurotic  nor  brainless,  might 
thoroughly  enjoy  himself. 

And  who  is  the  plain,  everyday  person 
when  it  'comes  to  reading  books?  He  is  all 
of  us,  with  the  exception  of  the  connoisseur, 
the  specialist,  and  the  loving  appraiser  of 
books,  whose  long  apprenticeship  to  good 
reading  gives  them  the  means  as  well  as  the 
right  to  a  greater  catholicity.  It  is  all  of  us, 
except  the  foppish  and  eccentric  readers,  the 
newfangled  and  the  supercilious,  the  diseased 
of  mind  and  the  warped  aesthetically.  It  is  all 
of  us,  except  the  barbarian  and  the  half  liter- 
ate, the  vulgar  in  taste  and  the  indifferent. 

And  this  leaves  so  many  that  it  is  strange 
34 


THE    PLAIN    PERSON 

that  authors  who  write  for  money  and  good 
repute,  and  publishers  who  prefer  a  sure 
twenty  thousand  to  a  speculative  thousand 
do  not  consider  us  more  carefully.  For 
when  we  get  what  we  want  we  will  buy  and 
read  and  pass  it  on  even  unto  the  next  gen- 
eration. 

There  must  always  be  a  fringe  of  the  ex- 
perimental in  literature — poems  bizarre  in 
form  and  curious  in  content,  stories  that  over- 
reach for  what  has  not  hitherto  been  put  in 
story  form,  criticism  that  mingles  a  search 
for  new  truth  with  bravado.  We  should 
neither  scoff  at  this  trial  margin  not  take  it 
too  seriously.  Without  it,  literature  becomes 
inert  and  complacent.  But  the  everyday  per- 
son's reading  is  not,  ought  not  to  be,  in  the 
margin.  He  asks  for  a  less  experimental 
diet,  and  his  choice  is  sound.  If  authors  and 

publishers  would  give  him  more  heed  they 
35 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

would  do  wisely.  They  are  afraid  of  the 
swarming  populace  who  clamor  for  vulgar 
sensation  (and  will  pay  only  what  it  is 
worth),  and  they  are  afraid  of  petulant 
literati  who  insist  upon  sophisticated  sensa- 
tion (and  desire  complimentary  copies). 
The  stout  middle  class,  as  in  politics  and  in- 
dustry, has  far  less  influence  than  its  good 
sense  and  its  good  taste  and  its  ready  purse 

deserve. 

H.  S.  C. 


36 


TO   THE   GENERAL   READER 

THE  American  reader  has  been  abused. 
Whenever  an  editorial  writer  needs  a  topic, 
or  a  critic  desires  to  be  quoted,  or  an  author 
loses  his  temper,  the  American  reader  is  the 
victim.  He  is  superficial,  he  is  sentimental; 
he  is  lazy,  he  is  ignorant;  he  is  stingy,  he  is 
provincial ;  he  is  everything  that  will  fill  up  a 
newspaper  paragraph  or  make  a  stinging  re- 
view criticism. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  defend  the 
general  reader,  although  we  know  him  well, 
and  like  him.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  our  de- 
sire at  this  writing  to  add  one  more  charge 
to  the  account,  the  charge  which  in  our  judg- 
ment is  most  worth  making  against  his  liter- 
ary integrity.  But  chivalry  requires  that  he 
37 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

should  be  cleared  of  false  imputations  before 
renewed  chastening. 

Now,  American  readers  are  not  a  bit  more 
superficial  or  lazy  or  sentimental  or  ignor- 
ant or  stingy  or  provincial  than  British  read- 
ers or  French  or  German.  There  may  be 
more  Americans  fond  of  sentimental  books, 
because  far  more  Americans  read  books. 
Nothing  could  exceed  the  depths  of  slushiness 
into  which  the  relatively  few  British  of  the 
semi-literate  classes  who  read  books  at  all 
descend.  Any  traveller  who  will  study  an 
English  newsstand  shelf  may  convince  him- 
self of  that.  Likewise,  there  may  be  more  nu- 
merically of  lazy  readers,  superficial  readers, 
provincial  readers,  ignorant  readers  in  a 
country  like  America,  where  reading  is  a  na- 
tional habit  than  in  foreign  parts,  where  it 
is  still  a  class  peculiarity.  As  for  stinginess, 

the  publishers  have  been  trying  to  convict  the 
38 


TO   THE   GENERAL   READER 

American  public  of  buying  too  few  books, 
and  rightly,  for  it  is  the  purchase  of  good 
reading  in  permanent  form  that  stabilizes 
culture;  yet  one  should  consider  the  money 
spent  by  the  average  American  family  yearly 
for  reading  matter,  much  of  which,  though 
periodical  in  form,  is  good,  and  later  goes 
into  books.  Nowhere  in  the  world  is  there 
anything  comparable  to  our  voracious  read- 
ing of  periodical  literature,  and  while  the 
habit  has  its  serious  abuses  it  should  not  be 
underrated,  scorned,  or  hastily  condemned. 

So  much,  therefore,  by  way  of  clearing  the 
air  of  too  often  repeated  accusations.  Our 
own  charge  against  the  general  reader  is  as 
general  as  he  is,  and  is  directed  against  liter- 
ate and  semi-literate  alike.  The  American 
reader  is  generous  and  appreciative,  he  ap- 
plauds mental  agility  and  cleverness,  he  has  a 

keen  sense  for  action,  a  healthy  distrust  of 
39 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

rhetoric,  and  a  ready  approval  for  whatever 
interests  him ;  but  his  sense  of  beauty  is  dull. 
He  does  not  ask  for  beauty,  he  does  not  ex- 
pect beauty,  and  when  he  gets  beauty  he  often 
does  not  recognize  it. 

The  reference  is  not  to  "purple  patches" 
and  literary  ornamentation  of  the  encrusted 
variety.  This  is  an  often  deceptive  beauty 
that  we  are  all  of  us  likely  to  praise  unread. 
Beauty  in  a  completer  sense  is  what  is  meant 
— that  organic  beauty  which  comes  as  natu- 
rally as  dew  upon  grass  when  the  imagination 
is  true  and  piercing  and  the  garment  of  ex- 
pression fits  the  thought  like  a  gown.  Re- 
flection and  depth  of  emotion  have  much  to 
do  with  such  beauty — and  in  general  Ameri- 
can readers  do  not  appreciate  depth  of 
feeling,  as  is  too  clear  from  the  books  we 
praise  as  "deep."  Perfect  workmanship, 

where  a  structure  of  words  arises  like  a  build- 
40 


TO   THE   GENERAL    READER 

ing  from  the  idea  of  the  architect,  is  another 
factor — and  we  Americans  are  insensitive  to 
perfect  workmanship,  as  is  proved  by  our 
ready  enthusiasm  for  mere  cleverness  and 
our  tardy  recognition  of  the  writings  of 
Gather  and  Hergesheimer  and  Cabell  and 
Frost  and  Robinson  and  Santayana,  where 
the  author  has  dealt  with  his  theme  as  a  great 
portrait  painter  with  his  subject,  ceasing 
labor  only  when  he  has  written  the  truth,  the 
whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth  of 
what  he  sees  and  feels. 

It  is  two  very  simple  things  one  would  ask 
of  the  general  reader — merely  to  be  discon- 
tented with  short  cuts  to  literature;  stories 
that  are  told  just  to  fill  out  ingenious  plots, 
poems  that  rephrase  platitudes,  essays  that 
are  smart  but  get  nowhere — all  writing  that 
is  machine-made,  insincere,  sloppy,  meretri- 
cious, flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable;  and  next, 
41 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

to  ask  for  beauty  in  the  right  sense,  to  ask 
that  a  story  or  a  poem  be  beautiful  as  a 
cathedral,  a  sword,  a  steel  building,  a  race 
horse,  an  automobile,  a  carved  gem  can  be 
beautiful.  We  are  a  slovenly  race  but  a 
clever  one,  and  we  can  give  the  public  what  it 
wants  when  it  wants  it.  Doubtless  the  pearls 
cast  before  swine  were  artificial;  and  our 
writers'  pearls  have  often  been  artificial  too, 
because  their  audience,  although  risen  far 
above  husks,  has  been  content  with  fabricated 
gems.  Authors  will  have  more  real  pearls 
to  sell  when  there  is  a  better  market  for 

them. 

H.  S.  C. 


42 


PROSPERO  AND  THE   "PICTURES" 

Per.    This  is  a  most  majesticke  vision,  and 
Harmonious  charmingly:  may  I  be  bold 
To  thinke  these  spirits? 

Pro.    Spirits,  which  by  mine  Art 
I  have  from  their  confines  call'd  to  enact 
My  present  fancies. 

Per.    Let  me  live  here  ever, 
So  rare  a  wondred  Father,  and  a  wise 
Makes  this  place  Paradise. 

SINCE  the  somewhat  morganatic  marriage  of 
literature  to  the  "movies"  there  have  been 
but  few  "majesticke  visions."  Many  experi- 
ments have  been  made  in  the  adapting  of 
novels  and  stories  to  the  screen,  and  much 
time  and  money  have  been  wasted.  So  has 
much  sage  advice.  Nevertheless,  we  should 

like  to  venture  a  suggestion. 
43 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

We  feel  that  in  their  choice  of  literature 
the  producers  have  overlooked  one  realm  of 
fiction  peculiarly  adapted  to  transformation 
into  moving  pictures,  by  reason  of  the  me- 
chanical resources  of  the  latter.  We  refer 
to  what  we  may  roughly  term  the  "literature 
of  fantasy" — a  type  of  literature  out  of 
which  the  stage  finds  it  mechanically  impos- 
sible to  make  convincing  plays,  but  out  of 
which  the  devices  of  the  movie  camera  could 
easily  create  not  only  ocular  delights  but 
magic  illusions  not  to  be  bettered  even  by  the 
most  masterly  writing.  Yet  the  movies  remain 
content  with  mere  "trick  films"  and  animated 
cartoons,  and,  when  they  turn  to  stories, 
plunge  heavily  on  ultra-sensational  and  ultra- 
moral  dramas  of  modern  life,  with  plots  the 
most  puerile,  sentimental,  and  obvious. 

Yet  we  believe  the  producer  of  "pictures" 

might  be  a  veritable  Prospero  at  enchanting 
44 


PROSPERO  AND  THE   "PICTURES" 

many  Ferdinands,  figured  as  his  audience. 
Certainly  there  is  an  Ariel  in  his  service  at 
the  wave  of  whose  wand  any  optical  illusion 
is  possible,  from  the  djinn  of  the  Arabian 
Nights  taking  substance  from  the  spiralling 
smoke  of  the  fisherman's  jar  to  the  comic 
possibilities  of  such  a  masterpiece  of  short 
fiction  as  H.  G.  Wells's  "The  Man  Who 
Could  Work  Miracles,"  where  a  greatly 
imaginative — and  profoundly  human — fan- 
tasy could  be  set  forth  with  delightful  actu- 
ality. 

There  is  also  a  large,  almost  unexplored 
field  in  fairy  tales  both  ancient  and  modern, 
in  weird  and  fantastic  poetry,  in  the  prose  of 
writers  who  let  the  lightning  of  truly  creative 
imagination  or  the  rainbows  of  quaint  fancy 
play  upon  the  borderland  between  the  real 
and  the  unreal.  As  diverse  writers  as  Poe, 

James  Stephens,  Wells  (in  his  earlier  work), 

45 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

Anstey,  Coleridge,  Barrie,  and  many  others 
could  be  named.  Yes,  we  are  perfectly 
aware  that  Barrie's  "The  Admirable  Crich- 
ton"  has  been  produced — as  "Male  and 
Female." 

For,  if  there  is  an  Ariel  in  Prospero's  serv- 
ice, there  is  also  a  Caliban. 

Pro.  (Aside.)    I  had  forgot  that  foule  conspiracy 
Of  the  beast  Caliban  and  his  confederates 
Against  my  life:  the  minute  of  their  plot 
Is  almost  come. 

The  fact  remains  that  the  production  of 
solid,  stodgy,  ranting,  weepy,  hectic  traves- 
ties of  real  life  founded  on  second-rate  novels 
and  magazine  stories  is,  at  this  writing,  the 
Caliban  of  the  movies.  In  such  productions 
half  the  reasons  for  the  movies  existing  as 
an  independent  art  are  deliberately  abjured. 
No  use  is  made  of  their  immense  facilities 

for  rendering  difficult  illusions  convincing  or 
46 


PROSPERO  AND   THE   "PICTURES" 

great  flights  of  the  imagination  poignantly 
real.  There  is  only  a  crude  representation, 
usually  soggy  with  sentiment,  of  a  theme  that 
could  be  far  more  artistically  handled  either 
in  the  written  world  or  on  the  stage.  Its 
best  moments  are  of  overstressed  ranting  ac- 
tion, necessary  to  get  the  wordless  effect 
"over";  its  worst  are  those  passages  where 
the  written  or  spoken  word  would  be  most 
significant,  but  where  the  mere  dumb  show 
is  obvious  and  wearisome.  We  have  wit- 
nessed any  number  of  these  "real  life" 
dramas,  and  yawned  our  way  out.  From  the 
deliberately  "significant"  movie  good  Lord 
deliver  us  I  Whereas  what  "majesticke 
visions,"  "harmonious  charmingly,"  if  Pros- 
pero  would  only  call  on  Ariel  more  often  I 

We  must  leave  it  there.     Much  of  the 
world's   greatest   literature   belongs    in   the 

magical,  fantastic  realm.     And  the  movies 
47 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

could  far  more  easily  make  us  believe  in  the 
actuality  of  an  Aladdin's  lamp  or  Wells's 
men  in  the  moon  than  in  the  stock  characters, 
stock  situations,  stock  plots,  and  stock 
tragedy  and  comedy  of  their  translations 
from  the  literature  of  "real  life."  Let  Pros- 
pero  call  on  his  spirits  to  "enact  his  present 
fancies."  There  have  been  so  few  experi- 
ments in  the  movies'  'own  natural  field.  So 
far  Caliban  has  threatened  Prospero  to  some 
effect  with  "all  the  infection  that  the  Sunne 
sucks  up."  Yet  is  Prospero,  indeed,  "so 
rare  a  wondred  father"  that  we  marvel  he 
has  heretofore  so  rarely  and  so  feebly  dared 

to  wave  his  wand. 

W.  R.  B. 


48 


SHAMEFACED   ART 

"GREAT  art  demands  passionate  apprecia- 
tion." It  would  be  interesting  to  take  a  con- 
sensus of  American  opinion  upon  that  pro- 
nouncement. Many  smiles  could  be  counted, 
much  ironic  comment  heard,  but  we  fear  that 
unqualified  acquiescence  would  be  confined 
entirely  to  the  folk  commonly  supposed  to 
inhabit  batik-hung  studios  in  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage. And  yet  the  dictum  is  mere  truth. 

Say  it  in  French,  "Great  art  demands  pas- 
sionate appreciation."  It  would  not  sound 
half  so  silly.  But  of  course.  Great  art  is  a 
passion  of  the  spirit. 

Here  in  the  United  States  we  pride  our- 
selves upon  being  a  rugged  people,  and  we 

are  upon  business  bent.    We  are  doers,  not 
49 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

dreamers:  building  blast  furnaces  and  fac- 
tories, growing  and  reaping  vast  acreages  of 
wheat,  indulging  in  engineering  feats,  volubly 
advertising  all  products  under  the  sun,  at- 
tending conventions,  amassing  money,  en- 
thralled by  country  houses,  motor  cars,  and 
golf  links.  Each  to  his  job,  we  say — but  art 
is  not  a  job ;  art  is  a  luxury.  Pleasant  if  you 
can  afford  it.  Yes.  But  it  is  not  real  work.. 

The  cultivated  foreigner,  however,  looks 
curiously  upon  our  activities  and  ingenuities 
coupled  with  our  casual  neglect  of  a  native 
art.  In  our  department  stores,  for  instance, 
he  notes  the  superabundance  of  our  books, 
their  attractive  jackets,  the  hard-hitting  "ap- 
peal" of  their  advertisements.  But  litera- 
ture? Here  and  there,  perhaps,  buried  in 
the  welter  somewhere,  lying  rather  out  of 
it,  lost  in  the  spreading  shadow  of  best  sell- 
ers. "Do  you  judge  all  books,  then,  by  the 
50 


SHAMEFACED   ART 

number  of  copies  they  sell — every  author  by 
the  amount  of  his  royalties?"  To  the  for- 
eigner it  would  seem  so. 

The  general  public  in  America  does  so 
judge.  Of  what  import  that  a  man  should 
write  a  book  if  it  is  not  what  the  majority  of 
the  people  want  to  read?  The  greatest  au- 
thors have  always  appealed  to  the  most  peo- 
ple. Other  books  fail  by  comparison.  Such 
is  the  verdict.  To  everything,  even  to  books, 
we  apply  a  standard  of  Usefulness  which 
we  interpret  most  singularly.  As  for  your 
"Great  art  demands  passionate  apprecia- 
tion," that  is  merely  a  whine  from  the  little 
fellows  who  have  not  "succeeded."  Trust 
healthy  American  judgment  to  pick  the  right 
books,  the  big  books,  the  books  that  count. 

But  unfortunately,  rugged  though  he  may 
appear,  a  true  artist  is  compact  of  sensibility 

and  subtlety.    He  is  not  to  be  measured  with 
51 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

a  yardstick,  appraised  in  a  generalization  for- 
mulated by  the  average  intelligence.  He  can 
be  truly  approached  only  by  minds  at  least 
desirous  of  the  qualities  his  own  evinces.  His 
work  is  also  the  product  of  an  intellectual 
passion,  inevitable  in  creation,  not  written 
for  this  "purpose"  or  that.  Only  where  it 
meets  an  answering  passion  of  the  mind  is 
its  full  meaning  delivered.  This  older  na- 
tions understand.  We,  not  yet. 

We  are  too  much  afraid  of  seeming  any- 
thing but  red-blooded,  rough,  rugged,  hale, 
hearty,  healthy.  Subtlety  is  insidious,  sensi- 
bility we  confuse  with  weakness,  art  with 
"artyness."  We  take  refuge  from  what  we 
do  not  understand  in  our  chief  pride,  our  Na- 
tional Sense  of  Humor.  Strange  how  much 
escapes  it  I 

So  beside  the  business  man  and  the  pro- 
fessional man  the  artist  goes  shamefaced. 
52 


SHAMEFACED   ART 

He  adopts  perforce  their  heartiness,  their 
healthiness,  their  rough,  rugged,  hale  red- 
bloodedness — at  least  superficially.  He  en- 
deavors to  make  his  writing  into  as  much  of 
a  business  as  possible.  He  hopes  to  appear 
"practical."  He  fears  to  be  accused  of  tem- 
perament. Or  he  simply  does  nothing  of  the 
sort,  rebels  entirely,  and,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
general  public,  enters  the  national  sideshow 
of  freaks. 

A  truly  preposterous  situation,  for  it  is  as 
if  the  social  body  practiced  a  deliberate  stulti- 
fication of  its  own  keenest  sense  organs.  The 
intelligence  of  the  true  artist  is  the  nerve 
centre  of  his  age.  Through  him  alone  do  we 
truly  see,  feel,  and  come  to  understand  our 
time. 

It  is  no  plea  for  special  dispensation  to 
point  out  that  such  widespread  indifference 

and  misjudgment  stunt  the  growth  to  mental 
53 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

maturity  of  any  nation.  When  the  artist  is 
regarded  as  a  true  worker  and  not  a  drone 
in  our  society,  when  the  many  strive  at  least 
to  meet  him  on  his  own  ground  instead  of 
always  insisting  that  he  must  meet  them  on 
theirs,  then  only  will  the  great  energy  that 
is  in  the  brawn  and  sinew  of  our  social  body 
have  a  fit  brain  and  spirit  to  guide  it. 

W.  R.  B. 


54 


IGNORANT  ART 

TIME  was  that  a  dime  novel  was  a  dime  novel, 
but  now  it  sells  for  $2  and  is  called  literature. 
Why  is  it  that  a  hundred  million  people 
can  produce  only  a  handful  of  novels  and 
short  stories  in  a  year  which  have  more  real 
value  for  humanity  than  a  course  dinner  that 
is  gobbled  down  and  forgotten?  It  is  usual 
to  damn  an  undiscriminating  public  for  this 
failure  in  art;  but  it  is  not  the  public  that 
writes  fiction.  The  American  public  for  a 
hundred  years  has  been  reading  the  best  fic- 
tion written  abroad.  A  half  dozen  English 
story  tellers  have  had  their  reputations  made 
in  America. 

We  believe  that  editors  do  not  give  their 

best  public  what  it  wants.     But  editors  do 
55 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

not  write  the  fiction  they  publish.  They  can- 
not make  silk  purses  out  of  sows'  ears,  even 
if  they  want  to,  which  has  not  yet  been 
proved.  Every  editor  will  assert  that  he  is 
searching  for  genius,  and  if  we  are  not  con- 
vinced that  he  knows  genius  when  he  sees  it, 
we  must  admit  his  further  contention,  that 
water  cannot  rise  above  its  source. 

No;  public  taste,  ease  of  publication, 
variety  of  interest,  even  editorial  capability, 
have  all  risen  with  the  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  the  country;  only  the  professional 
writers,  as  a  class,  have  not  progressed. 
They  have  become  astonishingly  clever,  as 
clever  as  the  mechanism  of  a  Ford;  but  as  a 
class  they  have  not  moved  ten  feet  towards 
literature.  They  have  standardized  their 
product  without  improving  the  model. 

For  one  thing,  as  a  class  they  do  not  know 

enough.     It  is  nonsense  to  suppose  that  a 
56 


IGNORANT   ART 

man  can  write  a  great  book  with  substance 
and  endurance  to  it  unless  he  knows  more, 
much  more,  than  the  general  reader.  Yet 
let  that  general  reader  take  the  average  short 
story,  or  serialized  novel,  and  test  it  for 
the  real  wisdom  involved.  If  he  finds  a 
range  of  knowledge  beyond  his  own  he  will 
be  lucky.  The  intellectual  background  of 
much  expensive  American  fiction  is  just  about 
equal  to  that  of  the  average  college  graduate 
a  year  after  he  has  taken  his  degree. 

Furthermore,  as  a  class  they  do  not  think 
enough.  It  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  a 
good  book,  with  any  seriousness  to  it,  can 
be  written  without  hard  and  deep  thinking. 
Our  writers  of  fiction  are  sprinters.  Their 
bottom  has  been  sacrificed  to  speed.  They 
can  be  incredibly  clever,  but  not  even  mod- 
erately profound.  The  general  reader  does 

not  want  to  be  bored  by  heavy  thinking,  but 

57 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

he  does  want  something  more  valuable  than 
the  commonplace  thoughts  of  everyday  Am- 
ericans, chopped,  peppered,  and  put  into  a 
brilliant  short  story.  If  he  cannot  reflect 
himself,  he  wants  some  one  to  reflect  for 
him;  and  our  story  writers  seldom  reflect. 
They  are  too  busy  writing,  to  reflect.  They 
are  so  busy  building  potato  bins  that  they 
don't  hoe  their  potatoes.  Literature  without 
reflection  behind  it  is  oyster  soup  without 
oysters.  The  two  greatest  American  stories, 
"The  Scarlet  Letter"  and  "Huckleberry 
Finn,"  are  products  of  reflection  even  more 
than  of  art.  How  can  a  brain  attached  to 
a  typewriter  and  fed  on  nothing  more  nour- 
ishing than  hurried  thinking  hope  to  rival 
them? 

It  is  not  fair  to  call  our  professional 
writers,  as  a  class,  illiterate ;  but  ignorant  by 

any  severe  standard  they  certainly  are,  and 

58 


IGNORANT   ART 

the  numerous  exceptions  who  do  know,  and 
do  think,  confirm  the  criticism  by  the  as- 
tonishing difference  of  their  product.  It  is 
not  fair  to  call  our  professional  story  tellers 
trivial,  but,  as  a  class,  superficial  they  cer- 
tainly are,  especially  the  cleverest  and  the 
most  emotional  among  them.  Most  of  the 
stories  that  are  called  "great"  in  the  adver- 
tisements fail  to  make  the  reader  think  or 
feel  anything  he  has  not  thought  or  felt  a 
hundred  times  before.  Most  of  them  give 
him  a  picture  of  life  and  himself  that  is  false. 
There  is  a  theory  generally  held  that  you 
have  to  know  an  immense  amount  to  be  a 
scholar,  or  a  scientist,  that  you  have  to  think 
deeply  to  be  a  lawyer,  that  you  have  to  feel 
intensely  to  be  a  musician,  a  painter,  or  a 
preacher;  but  that  to  be  a  writer  all  you 
need  is  a  fluent  pen,  some  acquaintance  with 

Alaska,  the  South  Seas,  or  the  slums,  and  a 

59 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

mind  ingenious  in  character  depiction  and 
plot.  It  is  a  bad  theory,  and  this  year,  which 
has  seen  at  least  four  fine  American  novels  in 
which  study,  reflection,  and  matured  knowl- 
edge have  confirmed  and  strengthened  art, 
is  a  good  year  in  which  to  proclaim  its  bad- 
ness. The  American  writer's  best  public  is 
deserting  him  for  foreign  literature  because 
he  tells  them  nothing  they  do  not  already 

know. 

H.  S.  C. 


60 


SLOVENLY  PETER  &  DAPPER  SAM 

WE  remember  only  too  well  the  Slovenly 
Peter  of  our  childhood,  who  wouldn't  keep 
himself  clean,  wouldn't  clip  his  finger  nails, 
wouldn't  brush  his  hair.  Are  there  too  many 
Struwel  Peters  in  American  literature? 

The  critics  think  so,  especially  university 
critics.  They  manhandle  our  realistic  poets 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  execrating  flat 
rhythms,  ugly  words,  dishevelled  phrases. 
They  quote  selected  passages  from  our  se- 
rious novels  full  of  loose  constructions  and 
blurred  meanings,  passages  that  read  as  if 
a  mouthful  of  words  had  been  spat  at  the 
page.  They  fling  out  at  journalism  which 
with  a  jaunty  air  rips  off  whole  paragraphs 

that  mean  little  or  nothing,  or,  like  the  finan- 
61 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

cial  editor's  forecasts,  take  back  at  the  end 
what  the  beginning  proposes. 

There  is  as  much  slovenly  writing  in 
America  as  there  is  slovenly  dressing  in  Eng- 
land. And  both  come  from  the  same  cause, 
the  opiate  of  "don't  care."  And  precisely  as 
your  person  of  literary  or  social  worth  in 
England  is  most  likely  to  dress  on  ordinary 
occasions  as  the  whim  or  the  nearest  articles 
suggest,  so  that  a  hideous  bonnet  or  a  pair 
of  wrinkled  trousers  are  much  more  likely  to 
belong  to  a  viscountess  or  a  baronet  than  to 
a  shop  girl  or  a  bank  clerk,  just  so  a  careless, 
take-me-for-what-I-am  fashion  of  writing 
(especially  in  fiction)  is  very  likely  in  Amer- 
ica to  accompany  real  substance,  deep  obser- 
vation, and  intense  sincerity.  He  who  is 
hailed  by  many  as  our  greatest  novelist  is 
one  of  the  worst  manipulators  of  English 

that  ever  wrote  books  worthy  to  be  read. 
62 


SLOVENLY  PETER  &  DAPPER  SAM 

And  yet  Slovenly  Peter  is  not  so  familiar 
in  America,  and  not  half  so  dangerous  to  the 
cause  of  real  literature,  as  Dapper  Sam. 
Slovenly  Peter,  like  many  a  bad  boy,  may 
grow  up  to  be  one  of  the  mighty.  When 
his  finger  nails  begin  to  annoy  him,  he  will 
clip  them.  When  dirty  hands  become  dis- 
tasteful, he  will  wash  them,  and  he  will  wash 
them  well.  But  Dapper  Sam  is  already  as 
grown  up  as  he  will  ever  be.  He  is  finished; 
and  he  knows  it  and  is  proud  of  it.  There 
is  nothing  in  him  to  reform. 

Dapper  Sam  is  legion.  He  writes  the 
short  stories  that  are  perfectly  built  and 
mean  nothing.  He  writes  the  plays  that  con- 
form, like  straw  hats,  exactly  to  this  year's 
model.  It  is  he  who  is  responsible  for  the 
deathly  English  of  so  much  competent 

journalism — sentence  after  sentence  without 
63 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

one  phrase  of  distinction,  one  word  chosen 
with  care.  He  has  developed  a  style  for 
novel  writing  which  is  like  a  sounding  gallery, 
all  echoes  of  past  voices,  nothing  that  is  his 
own,  nothing  that  carries  personality,  noth- 
ing that  some  one  else  could  not  have  writ- 
ten. He  writes  ream  after  ream  of  mediocre 
poetry,  prettily  phrased,  adequately  rhymed, 
that  travels,  like  the  parcel  post,  all  over  the 
United  States;  quite  fit  to» print,  quite  fit  to 
read,  but  as  empty  of  individuality  as  souls 
which  have  lost  touch  with  their  egoes. 

Dapper  Sam  never  meditates,  never 
grows  spiritually  excited,  never  is  wrought 
up  over  his  fellow  man,  never  makes  Eng- 
lish his  own.  He  writes,  but  he  does  not 
compose;  he  borrows  words,  but  does  not 
own  them.  He  never  plays  upon  his  instru- 
ment, but  puts  roll  after  roll  of  records  into 
64 


SLOVENLY  PETER  &  DAPPER  SAM 

the  aperture  and  treads  out  competent  and 
mechanical  music. 

The  editors,  perhaps,  have  helped  in  his 
making,  for  he  serves  their  purpose  well, 
both  in  quantity  never  failing  and  in  a  quality 
which,  like  canned  tomatoes  and  gasolene, 
can  be  bought  safely  with  foreknowledge  as 
to  what  one  is  getting  and  how  it  will  be 
received.  The  public,  quite  certainly,  are 
at  least  equally  responsible— our  slovenly, 
good-natured  public,  who  wish  to  read 
quickly,  painlessly.  He  is  made  in  the  image 
he  has  selected.  We  can  do  nothing  for 
him.  He  can  do  nothing  for  himself. 

The  creature,  like  the  movies,  and  chew- 
ing gum,  and  the  yellow  press,  and  standard 
collars,  has  a  real  usefulness  in  a  democracy 
in  process  of  being  educated.  But  he  should 
be  branded.  Critics  should  hang  "Dapper 

Sam"  across  his  shoulders.     He  should  be 
65 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

prevented  from  snubbing  the  Slovenly  Peters, 
who,  unkempt  though  they  may  be,  are  bet- 
ter than  he  is.  He  should  be  forbidden  to 
pass  for  the  man  of  letters  he  is  not. 

H.  S.  C. 


66 


"IS  IT  WHAT  OUR  READERS 

WANT?" 

IT  seems  high  time  to  reexamine  a  shibboleth 
that  has  for  many  years  simplified  editing 
for  the  Gileadites  of  the  blue  pencil  in  the 
strongholds  of  financially  successful  Amer- 
ican magazines.  Large  corporations  nowa- 
days conduct  groups  of  such  periodicals.  To 
their  editors  the  test  query  that  heads  this 
article  appears  beautifully  practical  and 
logical  and  is,  in  actual  value,  exquisitely  the 
reverse.  It  is  obvious  that  we  are  not  speak- 
ing here  of  magazines  specializing  in  any 
definitely  circumscribed  field,  nor  of  the  an- 
cient and  overdignified  "quality  group,"  as 
advertisers  call  it.  We  refer  to  the  great 

moneyed  mediums  popularly  supposed  to  en- 
67 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

courage  creative  literature.  The  truth  is 
that  American  readers  are  left  still  wanting 
by  the  modern  magazine,  however,  prevalent 
be  a  certain  form  of  specious  and  meretri- 
cious writing. 

Modern  advertising  has  degenerated  sim- 
ply into  a  study  of  how  the  desire  to  spend 
money  may  be  played  upon  by  any  one  with 
a  product  to  sell.  Its  peculiar  (to  say  the 
least)  application  of  psychology  has  grad- 
ually taken  hold  of  the  handling  of  periodical 
literature.  Whether  or  not  you  "go  in"  very 
thoroughly  for  statistics,  you  attempt  to  as- 
certain the  particular  kind  of  trash  that 
soothes  without  puzzling  the  stereotyped 
mind;  the  concocted  verisimilitude  that  passes 
for  "real  life"  with  the  unthinking.  You 
work  out  its  value  in  dollars  and  cents  as  a 
circulation  builder.  You  arrive  at  a  mathe- 
matical conclusion  that  has  no  more  to  do 
68 


"IS  IT  WHAT   READERS  WANT?" 

with  that  difficult  and  delighting  art  we  call 
"good  writing"  than  a  mail  order  catalogue. 
You  can  then  compose  a  recipe  for  the  kind 
of  thing  your  readers  will  "eat  up."  Sex, 
sensationalism,  sentimentality,  "up  to  the 
minute"  stuff.  And  think  of  the  money  you 
can  make  at  it!  If  you  make  money  the 
magazine  is  a  success;  you,  as  a  writer,  are 
a  success;  you  can  buy  a  country  place  in  the 
environs  of  Manhattan  and  own  your  own 
car. 

This,  then,  is  the  Lure  of  Literature  for 
the  younger  writers  in  America  who  have  a 
style  and  something  to  say.  They  either  suc- 
cumb to  this  philosophy  or  they  do  not.  If 
they  do  not,  well,  their  experience  in  the  past 
has  been  that  they  do  not  flourish,  though  the 
necessarily  independent  attitude  of  the  strong- 
minded  young  writer  is,  to  a  slight  degree, 

better  recognized  now,  due  to  much  painful 
69 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

pioneering.  But  in  general  the  old  meaning- 
less query,  "Is  it  what  our  readers  want?" 
rules  supreme. 

For  we  know  well  enough  what  they  want 
— want  in  its  true  sense  of  "lack."  They 
want  a  literature  that  is  a  living  expression 
of  unusual  personalities,  not  a  syncopated 
tune,  played  on  a  cash  register,  by  shrewd 
but  mediocre  minds.  They  want  analyses  of 
human  beings  by  minds  capable  at  least  of  in- 
telligent, if  not  of  profound,  interpretation; 
they  want  stories  dealing  with  old  situations, 
either  in  the  light  of  modern  rationality,  what 
there  is  of  it,  or,  at  least,  from  a  freshly  per- 
sonal point  of  view.  They  want  work  of 
intellectual  integrity  and  uncompromising  in- 
dividuality. They  get  the  products  of  fake, 
sensationalism,  compromise,  adherence  to 
formula.  They  get  fed  to  them  constantly 

everything  that  appeals  to  their  worst  tastes, 
70 


"IS  IT  WHAT  READERS  WANT?" 

to  their  cheapest  desires,  to  their  weakest 
(if  unanalyzed)  emotions.  They  gobble  this 
pap,  and  the  editors  wax  proud  that  they 
"know  human  nature." 

For  it  works  out  in  dollars  and  cents,  you 
see.  It  works  out  in  dollars  and  cents.  Is 
not  that,  after  all,  the  highest  standard? 
Turning  to  the  days  of  the  early  Renaissance, 
when  the  passion  for  ideas  and  culture  was 
otherwise,  we  are  led  to  wonder  just  how 
greatly  the  world  progresses.  Well,  we  have 
at  least  produced  some  few  smaller  pub- 
lishers and  booksellers,  who,  thrive  as  they 
may,  tend  with  ingenuous  ardor  the  flicker- 
ing flame  on  the  altar  of  good  writing.  We 
have  seen  a  few  of  the  smaller  "faddish" 
magazines  evincing  a  real  desire  for  inde- 
pendent expression.  The  flourishing  maga- 
zine companies  that  exist  as  large  commercial 

organizations  primarily  cannot  wholly  over- 
71 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

shadow  the  country  with  the  dollar  mark. 
They  merely  do  the  best  they  can. 

Think  it  over.  Take  a  glance  at  the 
magazine  counter  in  any  subway  station; 
weigh  and  analyze  the  amount  of  yawp,  bun- 
combe, purely  meretricious  appeal.  Then  de- 
cide whether  this  attack  is  ill-grounded  or 
not.  And,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  remedy 
lies  with  the  readers.  It  is  by  their  suffrages 
that  such  a  condition  exists.  What  do  you 

want? 

W.  R.  B. 


72 


. 


LITERARY  REVIVALISM 

THE  religious  revival  is  still  a  phenomenon 
that  exercises  peculiar  power  over  the  minds 
of  the  multitude.  But  its  heyday  has  passed. 
The  awakening  of  a  "social  consciousness," 
through  treatise  and  oratory,  much  of  it  in 
the  revival  spirit,  has  also  lost  its  first,  fine, 
careless  rapture.  Is  the  time  now  ripe  for 
purely  literary  and  artistic  revivalism? 
Would  it  be  possible  to  sway  audiences  in  the 
cause  of  art  and  literature  with  any  of  that 
strange  power  over  the  emotions  possessed, 
for  instance,  by  even  the  shabbiest  of  Gospel- 
shouters?  Would  it  be  possible  to  organize 
any  kind  of  a  crusade  in  the  cause  of  litera- 
ture? Could  the  right  influence  conceivably 

be  wielded  to  convert  the  many? 
73 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

In  the  case  of  one  modern  poet  and 
pamphleteer,  sturdy  effort  to  awaken  small 
towns  to  an  appreciation  of  literature  and 
art  (accompanied  by  exhortations  to  civic 
improvement)  has  recently  met  with  some 
success  in  the  Middle  West.  Consideration 
of  what  this  man  has  done  inspires  our  in- 
terrogation. Nothing  like  the  influence  of  a 
Ruskin  on  the  art  of  the  England  of  his  time 
has  heretofore  come  to  pass  in  the  case  of 
literature  in  America.  We  have  had  our 
Elbert  Hubbard  and  our  Chautauqua  for  the 
rank  and  file,  experiments  like  Seymour 
Eaton's  Booklover's  Library,  but  little  be- 
yond this.  We  have  the  present  bookselling 
campaign,  with  its  slogan  of  "Buy  a  Book 
a  Week,"  we  have  the  publisher's  blurb  and 
the  shouting  advertisement.  But  the  average 
person  (not  the  bookish  or  naturally  artistic 

person)    lacks  the   proper  mental  stimulus 

74 


LITERARY   REVIVALISM 

from  minds  possessed  of  a  truly  discriminat- 
ing enthusiasm  for  literature. 

Literature  in  itself  is  a  term  that  the  aver- 
age person  looks  at  suspiciously.  Discourses 
by  eminent  authorities  on  letters  he  shuns. 
Sensitive  and  detached  essays  on  the  peculiar 
charm  of  rare  and  classic  volumes  he  will 
not  read.  He  needs  a  combination  of  the  cir- 
cus barker  and  the  genuine  savant  with  a 
distinct  sense  of  humor  to  awaken  his  per- 
ceptions to  the  glamour  and  pleasure  residing 
in  really  good  books.  For  he  will  fight  like  a 
steer  against  "improving  his  mind." 

And,  unfortunately,  so  few  of  us  are 
properly  qualified  to  be  barkers  before  the 
booth  of  literature.  Though  we  sing,  beat 
the  tom-tom,  whine,  or  shout,  the  general 
public,  unimpressed,  drifts  by.  The  pub- 
lishers' posters,  where  every  new  novel  is 

hailed  and  acclaimed  as  the  greatest  some- 

75 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

thing  since  something  else,  and  extracts  from 
press  clippings  furnish  starred  ejaculations — 
these,  oh,  they  are  just  "advertising" !  What 
shall  I  read?  Read  the  reviewers?  Which 
can  I  trust?  I'll  read  some  book  they're  all 
saying  the  same  thing  about.  It  stands  to 
reason  there  must  be  something  in  it,  if 
they're  all  talking  about  it;  and  then  I  can 
talk  about  it,  too.  That  is  the  way  the  aver- 
age man  chooses  his  seasonal  reading. 

So  the  need  is  for  some  Billy  Sunday  or 
Gen.  William  Booth  of  literature,  with  the 
same  power  over  the  spirit  of  the  masses 
that  these  exhorters  exercised  in  the  name  of 
the  Gospel  in  the  past,  and  yet,  let  us  hope, 
with  a  good  deal  more  intelligence  and  bet- 
ter taste  than  have  been  evinced  by  at  least 
one  of  them.  Such  a  man  could  perhaps  do 
a  good  deal  toward  arousing  popular  inter- 
est in  the  best  books,  more  than  Elbert  Hub- 
76 


LITERARY    REVIVALISM 

bard  or  the  Chautauqua,  five-foot  shelves, 
special  editions,  or  any  number  of  cheap  fic- 
tion libraries. 

How  he  is  to  operate  is  another  question. 
The  poet  we  referred  to  has  mapped  out 
thoroughly  and  originally  his  own  campaign 
for  the  State  of  Illinois.  But  what  is  more 
important,  he  has  succeeded  in  beginning  to 
"put  it  over."  Why?  First,  because  he 
convinces  as  an  actual  practicing  creator  in 
the  art  he  preaches.  Second,  because  he  is 
possessed  of  an  almost  daemonic  enthusiasm 
inherited  from  a  religious  revivalist  parent- 
age. He  has  turned  all  the  exhorter's  desire 
for  spiritual  regeneration  into  a  new  channel. 
Art  and  literature  have  possessed  him  as  his 
parents  were  possessed  by  the  flames  of  re- 
ligious faith.  Third,  he  possesses  extraordi- 
nary sensitiveness  to  all  manifestations  of 

beauty,  and  a  distinct  power  of  discriminat- 
77 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

ing  between  the  genuine  and  the  tawdry  in 
art,  and  between  the  dead  and  the  living. 

This  is  the  type  of  new  literary  revivalist, 
possibly  with  some  modifications,  who  might 
do  much  for  a  renaissance  of  literary  interest 
in  America,  that  those  who  came  to  scoff 
might  remain  to  pray,  that  one  of  the  most 
valuable  stimuli  to  the  spirit  of  man  might  be 
regained  for  our  nation.  Truly,  where  a  soul 
is  saved  to  the  appreciation  of  good  writing, 
intellectual  integrity,  genuinely  fine  feeling — 
and  out  of  the  snares  and  pitfalls  of  mere 
emotional  welter,  sentimentality,  raucous  un- 
reality, highly  seasoned  melodrama — the 
composite  soul  of  a  nation  is  enlightened  and 
strengthened  by  just  that  much. 

W.  R.  B. 


78 


THE  MASQUERADING  TRACT 

WHY  is  it  that  so  much  of  the  writing  of  the 
day,  while  vivid  and  provocative  enough,  is 
yet  ineffectual  as  criticism  of  life  and  imper- 
fect as  art?  That  our  intellectual  journals, 
with  all  their  earnestness,  are  hardly  less 
ephemeral  in  nature  than  their  less  sober 
fellows — the  fiction  magazines?  That  our 
novels  with  a  moral,  like  "Main  Street"  and 
"Winesburg,  Ohio,"  will  in  all  probability  in 
a  few  years'  time  have  gathered  the  cobwebs 
of  literary  history?  That  our  poetry  with  a 
didactic  bent  will  live  only  in  the  anthologies 
if  at  all? 

In  part  at  least  it  is  because  American 
literature  of  the  present  has  acquired  a  pro- 
pagandist turn,  and  is  serving  the  ends  of 
79 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

particular  theses  Bather  than  of  universal  art. 
In  our  lightest  fiction,  as  well  as  our  most 
solid  criticism,  we  have  taken  to  pointing  a 
moral  to  adorn  our  taie.  What  the  tract  es- 
sayed to  do  in  the  past,  the  novel,  the  review, 
even  poetry  attempts  to  do  to-day.  True, 
the  intention  is  frequently  disguised;  often, 
perhaps,  not  consciously  present  in  the  mind 
of  the  author.  But  nevertheless  it  exists. 
Take,  for  example,  the  type  of  story  that 
appears  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post — the 
most  widely  read  of  our  periodicals.  What 
does  it  do  but  preach  again  and  once  again 
the  value  of  daring,  self-confidence,  and  re- 
sourcefulness? It  is  a  sugar-coated  homily 
on  those  virtues.  Take  our  current  criticism. 
Most  of  it  is  unbiassed  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
free  from  personal  animus,  but  how  little  of 
it  is  divorced  from  the  writer's  desire  to 

maintain  some  political,  or  social,  or  ethical 
80 


THE    MASQUERADING    TRACT 

thesis.  Take  a  novel  like  "Main  Street."  It 
is  a  tract  against  the  soul-shattering  experi- 
ences of  life  »n  a  small  town. 

Now,  the  desire  constantly  to  enforce  a 
moral  or  establish  a  theory  may  lead  to  an 
elevated  literature,  but  it  also  conduces  to  a 
cramped  one.  You  cannot  square  the  circle 
in  literature  any  more  than  in  mathematics. 
If  you  have  to  exalt  a  precept  you  must  of 
necessity  subordinate  to  it  other  generalities. 
You  become  a  special  pleader.  And  since 
special  pleading  is  apt  to  be  of  the  moment 
and  rigidly  circumscribed  you  produce  a 
literature  that  lacks  the  qualities  that  make 
for  power  and  endurance. 

Matthew  Arnold  summed  up  the  rule  for 
English  criticism  in  the  one  word  "disinter- 
estedness," and  maintained  that  criticism  was 
to  show  its  disinterestedness  by  "steadily  re- 
fusing to  lend  itself  to  any  of  those  ulterior, 
81 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

political,  practical  considerations  about  ideas, 
which  plenty  of  people  will  be  sure  to  attach 
to  them  .  .  .  but  which  criticism  really  has 
nothing  to  do  with."  And  surely  it  is  at 
least  in  part,  because  our  present-day  criti- 
cism has  departed  so  far  from  this  rule,  be- 
cause it  is  in  such  large  measure  polemic  and 
controversial,  that,  despite  its  frequent  keen- 
ness and  occasional  brilliance,  it  has  made 
little  lasting  contribution  to  letters. 

With  fiction  we  are  in  no  better  case.  Our 
more  serious  novelists,  like  our  critics,  are 
writing  to  establish  definite  contentions.  In- 
stead of  looking  upon  society  as  a  whole,  they 
are  focusing  their  vision  on  its  excrescences, 
and  exhibiting  instead  of  the  organism  itself 
its  festers  and  its  sore  spots.  The  great 
Victorians  were  wiser.  They,  too,  saw  the 
shortcomings  and  injustices  of  their  time ;  and 

they,  too,  levelled  the  shafts  of  their  art 
82 


THE   MASQUERADING   TRACT 

against  them.  But  they  never  forgot  that 
the  whole  is  larger  than  its  part,  and  they 
depicted  the  human  drama  in  its  grandeur 
as  well  as  in  its  pettiness.  Because  they 
showed  life  as  more  various  than  the  con- 
ditions against  which  they  were  directed, 
Dickens's  novels  have  outlived  the  abuses 
which  he  flayed  in  them.  Because  he  saw 
something  in  human  nature  to  exalt  as  well 
as  to  satirize,  Thackeray  is  with  the  im- 
mortals. 

We  do  not  wish  to  decry  the  high  intention 
that  goes  into  much  of  the  more  serious  writ- 
ing, both  critical  and  imaginative,  of  the  day. 
But  we  do  wish  to  maintain  that  so  long  as 
our  authors  continue  to  use  their  talents  to 
expound  a  thesis,  or  exploit  a  prejudice,  so 
long  as  they  isolate  phenomena  and  on  the 
basis  of  those  isolated  phenomena  generalize 

about  life,  they  will  produce  criticism  that 
83 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

will  interest  the  reader  of  the  moment  and 
will  hold  the  reader  of  the  future  not  at  all, 
and  fiction  that  will  have  a  local  but  not  a 
lasting  or  universal  appeal.  They  will  give 
to  the  world  a  significant  literature,  but  not 

a  distinguished  one. 

A.  L. 


84 


ON  LITERARY  STRUCTURE 

Two  main  classes  of  creative  prose  writing 
can  be  discerned  in  America  to-day:  that 
which  editors  stamp  as  "good  fiction,"  that 
which  our  younger  writers  attempt  and  be- 
lieve in  as  "literature."  The  former  is  built 
according  to  a  formula  with  definite  struc- 
tural qualities  we  all  recognize.  The  latter 
is  in  numerous  instances  experimental,  tenta- 
tive in  outline,  meandering,  amorphous — for 
the  best  of  our  young  writers,  with  genuine 
gifts  of  imagination,  observation,  and  real- 
istic truthfulness,  have  turned  definitely  away 
from  the  formulas  of  the  current  periodical. 
Let  us  examine  such  formulas  a  little  more 
closely.  In  the  first  place,  the  new  magazine 

writer  who  becomes  a  nine  days'  wonder  is 
85 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

usually  the  man  or  woman  possessed  of  in- 
timate and  first-hand  knowledge  of  some  par- 
ticular locality  and  class  of  people,  rather 
than  a  being  of  truly  superior  intelligence. 
Such  a  writer  may  genuinely  and  sincerely 
portray  actual  life,  whether  that  of  the  East 
Side  Semite,  the  Southern  negro,  the  profes- 
sional baseball  player,  or  any  other  group, 
but  his  most  valuable  contribution  remains 
merely  local  color.  His  talent  is  very  defi- 
nitely circumscribed.  He  simply  supplies  new 
backgrounds  for  old  plots,  new  "lingo"  for 
old  characters.  He  also  supplies  the  old, 
obvious,  and  easily  grasped  motivation,  swift 
action,  and  robust,  middle-class  sentiment. 

We  could  indeed  give  the  young  author 
two  sound  pieces  of  advice  on  how  to  succeed 
as  a  magazine  writer.  One  is  to  pick  at  once 
a  locality  not  already  exploited  in  fiction. 

Given  the  opportunity  to  emigrate  to  Zam- 
86 


ON   LITERARY    STRUCTURE 

boanga  or  Van  Diemen's  Land  for  an  in- 
tensive study  of  the  natives  in  those  parts,  all 
the  better.  Let  him  get  to  know  thoroughly 
the  local  colloquialisms,  what  the  inhabitants 
have  for  breakfast  and  dinner,  their  tribal 
customs,  how  they  furnish  their  houses,  their 
folk  -  lore,  table  -  manners,  all  their  daily 
whims,  habits,  and  humors.  Then  let  him 
concoct  a  plot. 

Let  him  concoct  it  with  due  regard  to  the 
popular  human  triangle  and  around  the  three 
great  central  facts  of  life — birth,  love,  and 
death.  Let  him  remember  that  there  must 
always  be  a  love  "interest"  and  a  more  or 
less  happy  ending.  Let  him  remember  that 
the  story  must  be  built  according  to  one  of  a 
very  few  time-hallowed  designs,  preferably 
plotted  to  satisfy  the  magazinist's  craving  for 
two  essentials,  viz.,  some  kind  of  a  mystery 

that  is  solved  and — the  triumph  of  the  under- 
87 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

dog — that  is,  a  certain  conventional  type  of 
underdog. 

So  far,  so  good.  This  is  the  "straight 
dope."  But  what  of  younger  writers  who 
impress  by  their  intelligence  yet  refuse  to 
conform  to  any  such  set  standards  and  rules  ? 
"Real  life  isn't  that  way!"  they  submit,  some- 
times haughtily.  And,  of  course,  we  know 
it  isn't.  All  our  lives  have  definite  begin- 
nings, when  we  are  first  thrust  forth  con- 
gestedly  squalling  into  a  cold  world.  Beyond 
that?  Have  they  really  any  one  definite 
turning  point,  any  definite  climax,  indeed  any 
great  reason  for  being  that  we  can  point  out 
(whatever  we  may  hope  or  believe)  ?  No. 
Is  not  life  infinitely  more  complicated  and 
involved  than  the  formulas  would  seem  to 
indicate?  It  is.  Is  not  present-day  society  in 
a  state  of  undeniable  flux  and  uncertainty? 

It  is.    Are  not  the  new  departures  of  science 
88 


ON   LITERARY    STRUCTURE 

and  philosophy,  the  social  ferment,  the  inter- 
national tangle,  the  new  reforms,  the  new 
freedoms,  the  new  prohibitions,  the  "new" 
everything  so  qualifying  and  coloring  our 
lives  and  the  thought  of  our  time  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  expect  clear-cut  and  defi- 
nite intaglios  of  the  period  from  any  writer 
possessed  of  real  greatness  as  an  interpreter? 
Yes.  Are  these  old  cut-and-dried  textbook  and 
magazine-office  formulas  then  all  we  need? 
How  about  new  forms,  experimentation, 
pioneer  efforts?  How  about  them  indeed! 
It  seems  to  us  entirely  natural  and  a  witness 
of  life  that  they  should  appeal  more  strongly 
to  the  rising  generation  of  writers  than  the 
mechanical,  commercialized  process  that  have 
raised  so  high  the  average  technical  excellence 
of  our  fiction — and  so  stultified  and  deadened 
its  intellectual  content. 

But.     The  eternal   "but,"   again.     How 
89 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

about  combining  structure  and  the  fine 
frenzy?  How  about  pouring  new  interpre- 
tation, new  vision,  a  new  depth  and  uni- 
versality of  appeal  (aside  from  mere  local 
color)  into — not  the  old  moulds,  necessarily, 
but  into  moulds  nevertheless,  from  which 
form — not  formlessness — may  emerge?  To 
use  another  figure,  how  about  building  the 
new  fiction  upon  some  definitely  articulated 
skeleton,  rather  than  letting  it  meander  forth 
in  an  essentially  invertebrate  and  jellyfish 
condition  as  to  structure,  however  vivid, 
virile,  and  true  its  content?  Can  no  golden 
mean  be  arrived  at,  or  rather,  is  not  the  full 
Shakespearean  equipment  (in  lesser  degree, 
we  may  grant)  still  possible:  interpretation 
of  one's  own  state  of  society  with  universal 
appeal,  understanding  of  human  nature,  and 
a  true  sense  of  the  baffling  complexities 

of  life  conveyed,   at  the  same  time,  with 
90 


ON   LITERARY   STRUCTURE 

sharp  technique,  definite  structure,  satisfying 
form? 

It  has  been  done  in  the  past  with  the — at 
that  time  "new" — revelations  of  the  past.  It 
may  even,  we  venture  to  say,  have  been  done 
once  or  twice  within  the  last  ten  years.  Cer- 
tainly it  can  be  done  again — living,  breathing 
sculpture  by  new  Pygmalions,  wrought  from 
the  common  clay  of  life  that  lies  all  about  us  I 

W.  R.  B. 


91 


THE  YOUNG  REALISTS 

WE  forget  the  precise  age  of  Malvolio,  but 
we  think  that  famous  Puritan  was  of  about 
the  same  age  as  our  younger  realists.  Though 
less  brainy,  like  them  he  was  cross-gartered 
and  despaired  of  his  world. 

The  younger  realists  do  not  like  America. 
Our  much  admired  country,  once  dotted  with 
friendly  villages,  the  home  of  virile  pioneers, 
seems  to  them  in  a  stage  of  pimply  indiges- 
tion following  upon  the  colic  of  the  industrial 
revolution.  Simplicity  has  given  way  to 
frivolity,  courage  to  shrewdness,  craftsman- 
ship to  the  machine-made,  beauty  to  ugliness, 
spiritual  energy  to  greed,  joy  of  working  to 
the  dulness  of  routine.  The  man  who  in- 
vents a  corn  cutter  to  save  labor  succeeds 
93 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

only  in  damning  a  town  by  making  it  wealthy. 
The  village  that  tries  to  get  educated  sticks 
half  way  and  becomes  a  horrid  example. 
Love  degenerates  into  a  guerrilla  warfare 
between  selfishness  and  appetite.  Out,  cursed 
spot,  that  calls  itself  Dayton,  or  Chicago,  or 
New  York!  they  cry,  and  back  to  the  fresh 
simplicities  of  the  '70's,  or  forward  to  some 
new  social  organization  where  a  man  can  own 
his  soul  again  I 

We  should  be  much  inclined  to  agree  with 
them  (except  as  to  the  fresh  simplicities  of 
the  '70's),  if  they  did  not  take  such  a  cross- 
gartered  view  of  the  matter.  Surely  the 
world  has  creaked  this  way  before  and  got 
over  it.  Surely,  Ohio,  let  us  say,  is  not  quite 
so  dull  and  drab  and  hopeless  a  place  as  they 
make  out,  even  now,  when  prosperity  has 
ruined  it. 

We  prefer  the  philosophy  of  the  older 
94 


THE    YOUNG    REALISTS 

realists.  They  knew  what  messieurs  les 
jeunes  have  just  discovered,  that  all  is  vanity, 
and  they  said  so  in  great  swinging  phrases 
that  made  kings  take  action  not  easily  ac- 
counted for  by  economic  theory.  Consider 
Bossuet,  for  example,  as  he  reflects  upon  the 
life  of  Maria  Henrietta : 

Commencez  aujourd'hui  a  mepriser  les  faveurs  du 
monde;  et  toutes  les  fois  que  vous  serez  dans  ces 
lieux  augustes,  dans  ces  superbes  palais  a  qui  Ma- 
dame donnait  un  eclat  que  vos  yeux  recherchent 
encore;  toutes  les  fois  que,  regardant  cette  grande 
place  qu'elle  remplissait  si  bien,  vous  sentirez 
qu'elle  y  manque,  songez  que  cette  gloire  que  vous 
admiriez  faisait  son  peril  en  cette  vie,  et  que  dans 
1'autre  elle  est  devenue  le  sujet  d'un  examen 
rigoureux,  ou  rien  n'a  etc  capable  de  la  rassurer  que 
cette  sincere  resignation  qu'elle  a  eu  aux  ordres  de 
Dieu  et  les  saintes  humiliations  de  la  penitence. 

And  if  the  French  is  difficult  of  translation, 
substitute  the  terser  Latin  of  Ecclesiastes : 

"Vanitas  vanitatum,  et  omnia  vanitas." 
95 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

Did  this  brave  Bossuet,  knowing  that  all, 
all  (even  realism)  was  vanity,  lose  interest 
in  the  doings  of  the  great  and  spirited  lady 
whose  earthly  career  he  was  celebrating? 
On  the  contrary.  The  conviction  that  in  the 
sight  of  God  a  thousand  years  were  as  a  day 
gave  him  a  certain  perspective  that  our  mod- 
erns lack.  Once  you  are  convinced  (and  are 
they  convinced?)  that  spiritual,  or,  if  you 
prefer  the  term,  ideal,  values  only  count,  you 
become  more  tolerant  of  the  poor  human 
animal,  running  hither  and  thither,  burrow- 
ing, acquiring,  loving,  dying.  You  may  smile 
at  his  vain  endeavors  (and  the  sense  of  hu- 
mor is  born),  you  may  pity  his  pretensions 
and  so  gauge  fairly  his  attempts  to  be  heroic, 
you  feel  the  childishness  of  his  pettier  sins, 
and  so  are  not  afraid. 

The  young  realists  who  cross-garter  their 

spirits  until  all  this  bustling,  irrelevant  life  of 
96 


THE    YOUNG    REALISTS 

ours  in  America  becomes  a  sordid  struggle 
among  machines,  are  afraid  of  life.  They 
are  of  the  seed  of  the  martyrs,  and  they  will 
go  to  the  stake  before  they  will  smile  at  the 
spectacle  of  civilization  trying  to  ruin  itself, 
as  it  has  always  done,  and  has  often  suc- 
ceeded in  doing.  But  they  lack  the  qualities 
ascribed  to  angels,  who,  so  we  are  told,  are 
made  by  men  both  to  laugh  and  to  weep. 

H.  S.  C. 


97 


ON  REVIEWING 

THERE  used  to  be  three  kinds  of  reviewing, 
and  now  there  are  at  least  four,  but  they  are 
not  the  same  kinds. 

There  was,  in  earlier  days,  the  voluminous 
essay  that  took  a  book  for  its  text,  and  then 
forgot  the  book  in  a  brand  new  treatment  of 
the  subject.  Often  enough  the  book  died  and 
the  review  lived  on  as  literature.  More 
often  the  book  lived  on  and  the  essay 
perished  of  its  own  irrelevant  dulness. 
There  was  the  venomous  review  written  to 
air  a  creed  or  satisfy  a  hate;  and  there  was 
the  book  review  proper,  which  stuck  to  its 
book  like  a  starfish  to  an  oyster,  and  gutted 
it. 

In  our  time  we  are  more  various  in  our 
99 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

reviewing.  The  essay-review  has  become 
more  honest,  calls  itself  an  essay  now  out- 
right, and  instead  of  borrowing  a  theme 
from  recent  publications  stands  on  its  own 
subject  and  develops  its  own  thoughts.  By 
this  the  essay  gains,  the  book  suffers.  For  it 
is  well  known  that  makers  of  books  would 
rather  be  talked  about  irrelevantly  than  not 
be  talked  about  at  all. 

The  venomous  review  has  been  trans- 
mogrified. The  swashbucklers  of  criticism, 
who  used  to  lay  about  with  their  "This  will 
never  do,"  and  their  "Contemptible  scrib- 
bling puppy,"  and  their  "Purveyor  of  sedi- 
tion and  heresy,"  have  given  place  to  social 
reformers  and  radical  theorists  who  will  re- 
view any  book  that  gives  them  a  chance  to 
preach,  but  neglect  the  rest.  Gall  has  been 
exchanged  for  physic.  Some  prefer  gall. 

As  for  the  gutter  of  books,  the  review 
100 


ON    REVIEWING 

that  followed  the  text  wherever  it  led — 
specialists  perform  that  task  now  in  technical 
journals,  just  as  specialists  now  perform  the 
operations  that  once  could  be  had  in  any 
barber's  or  apothecary's  shop.  No  one 
reads  the  technical  journals  but  specialists, 
and  so  books  for  the  general  reader,  in  this 
respect,  have  fared  hardly. 

They  have  space  enough,  however,  if  their 
subject  permits,  in  a  new  kind  of  reviewing 
which  has  flowered  like  the  dandelion  in  this 
our  America.  The  gossipy  review  has  be- 
come an  American  fashion.  Where  the  critic 
of  the  quarterlies  poured  out  his  informa- 
tion, the  new  reviewer  uptilts  his  personality. 
As  in  one,  so  in  the  other,  the  book  is  only 
an  excuse  for  a  display  of  words.  As  in  one 
it  was  not  the  book  that  counted,  but  the 
essay  about  it,  so  in  the  other  it  is  not  the 

book  either,  it  is  the  temperament  of  the  re- 
101 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

viewer.  Not  perception  but  a  witty  phrase 
makes  a  good  criticism;  and  whether  the 
reader  buys  the  book  is  of  little  importance, 
provided  he  reads  and  is  amused  by  the  re- 
view of  it. 

What  is  good  reviewing? 

Certainly  good  reviewing  must  review — 
must  dissect  and  expound,  interpret,  and 
praise  or  blame  the  book.  All  reviewers  can- 
not be  paragraphers,  columnists,  though  that 
just  now  seems  to  be  the  fashion.  Anything 
from  autumn  frocks  to  the  nebular  hypo- 
thesis may  be  criticised,  but  a  book  review 
must  (curious  that  it  is  necessary  to  say  it) 
re-see  a  book  through  the  eyes  of  a  critic  and 
interpreter. 

And  certainly  also  a  good  reviewer  will 
not  bury  himself  in  his  book,  like  an  ant  in 
a  sugar  bowl.  We  are  bored  by  reviews 

which  see  only  the  book  and  never  its  back- 
102 


ON    REVIEWING 

ground,  because  they  do  not  review  the  book; 
they  merely  photograph  it,  and  usually  by 
snapshot,  and  badly.  To  review  a  book  is 
to  discuss  it  in  relation  to  literature,  its  litera- 
ture especially,  whether  lyric  poetry,  mystery 
story,  or  character  novel;  to  set  it  against 
this  background  and  then  to  relate  it  to  the 
interests  and  experience  of  the  reader.  A 
reviewer  must  neither  stay  outside  nor  inside 
of  the  book  he  is  reading.  He  must  be 
amphibious,  or,  better,  like  the  airman,  he 
must  first  look  about  him,  and  then  soar. 
This  is  the  art,  as  distinguished  from  the 
science,  and  the  trade,  of  reviewing. 

So  much  for  the  philosophy  of  book  criti- 
cism. The  practice  is  simpler  than  the  theory 
and  also  more  difficult.  For  it  amounts 
merely  to  this:  that  every  book  should  have 
the  kind  of  reviewing  which  can  best  describe 

it  and  the  reviewer  who  can  best  review  it. 
103 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

Uniformity  is  the  curse  of  modern  life ;  it  is 
not  merely  a  curse ;  it  is  unnecessary  and  un- 
wise in  reviewing.  Good  thinking  needs  good 
minds.  Good  reviewing  requires,  chiefly, 
good  reviewers.  Let  us  pray  for  them. 

H.  S.  G 


104 


A  SERMON  FOR  REVIEWERS 

A.  CLUTTON-BROCK,  essayist  and  art  critic 
of  the  London  Times,  frees  his  heart  in  a 
recent  number  of  the  Nation  and  Athenteum 
of  a  burden  of  reproach.  Reviewing  in  Eng- 
land has  been  demoralized,  he  thinks,  by  a 
press  that  has  no  opinions  of  its  own.  "It 
has  a  notion  that  its  readers  wish  to  read 
reviews,  and  that  they  procure  publishers' 
advertisements;  but  at  the  same  time  it  sees 
small  commercial  value  in  them,  grudges  the 
space  for  them,  and  pays  the  reviewers  as 
little  as  possible.  And  it  is  able  to  pay  them 
very  little  because  there  are  many  people  who 
like  reviewing.  When  they  begin  it  it  seems 
delightful  to  get  a  book  for  nothing."  But 

their  very  love  of  writing  puts  them  in  the 
105 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

power  of  their  employers,  and  they  either 
give  up  reviewing  or  become  mere  hacks, 
who,  since  they  must  review  more  books  than 
they  can  read  in  order  to  stay  alive,  must 
cultivate  the  art  of  concealing  their  ignor- 
ance. It  is  strange,  he  thinks,  that  publishers 
should  waste  space  to  quote  from  reviews 
which  speak  of  "Undeniable  charm  of  style," 
"Notable  contribution  to  contemporary 
thought,"  "There  is  not  a  dull  page  from 
cover  to  cover." 

Thus  far,  and  with  some  show  of  ill-tem- 
per himself,  A.  Glutton-Brock.  We  leave  to 
the  consciences  of  newspaper  reviewers,  the 
judgment  of  American  readers,  and  the 
perusers  of  publishers'  advertisements  how 
far  his  words  hold  good  for  America. 

And  yet,  without  ungenerously  revealing 
our  own  opinions  as  to  the  facts  of  the  case, 

there  is  one  item  that  may  be  added  to  this 
106 


A   SERMON   FOR    REVIEWERS 

reviewers'  sermon — one  sin  that  is  more 
deadly  than  reviewing  a  book  without  read- 
ing it  because  it  is  committed  by  men  and 
women  whose  opinions  really  count.  And 
this  deadly  sin  is  reviewing  a  book  without 
comprehending  it. 

We  swing  too  often  in  our  better  American 
criticism  between  the  extremes  of  cool  super- 
ficiality and  warm  sentimentalism.  Either  the 
reviewer  bluntly  and  unsympathetically  says 
whether  the  book  is  good  or  bad,  and  lets  it 
go  at  that,  in  which  he  is  a  classifier  merely, 
or,  with  a  (haply  unconscious)  eye  to  the 
publishers'  notices  that  will  blazon  his  name 
so  titillatingly  in  some  subsequent  week,  he 
effervesces  in  a  profusion  of  epithets  that 
would  have  made  a  Greek  stare  and  an  Eliza- 
bethan long  to  show  how  enthusiasm  could 
be  expressed  by  a  man  with  a  real  vocabulary. 

And  the  book  is  either  categoried,   dis- 
107 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

sected,  desiccated  until  whatever  life  juice  it 
had  blows  away  in  the  dust  of  a  dry  style ;  or 
it  is  kissed  to  pieces  like  a  lover's  token,  be- 
dewed by  caresses,  mauled  and  toyed  over 
by  an  enthusiast  until  its  beauties  are  made  as 
vulgar  as  a  Broadway  cheek. 

Like  Elijah,  we  believe  ourselves  one  of 
an  infinitesimal  minority,  the  minority  that 
still  believes  a  book  review  should  distinguish 
the  merits  and  defects  of  a  book  and  explain 
them;  that  does  not  believe  it  should  be  a 
contribution  to  publicity  for  the  book,  or  the 
reviewer.  And  if  there  are  thousands  of  oth- 
ers, as  Elijah  was  told,  that  have  not  bowed 
the  knee  unto  Baal,  let  them  come  forward; 
there  will  be  many  to  welcome  them.  Yet 
we  do  not  believe  that  merits  are  measured 
by  inches,  or  defects  either — so  many  para- 
graphs good,  so  many  bad,  the  net  result,  as 
108 


A   SERMON    FOR    REVIEWERS 

the  book  review  digest  puts  it,  being  -j . 

Such  a  symbol,  and  indeed  mere  statement, 
generally  avails  little,  and  sometimes  noth- 
ing: it  is  the  argument  from  authority,  and 
in  art  there  is  no  autocracy  of  opinion.  Only 
in  books  of  fact  and  theory  are  such  literal 
pronouncements  valuable.  No,  the  review- 
er's task  is  to  merge  his  own  personality 
for  the  moment  with  what  life  there  is  in  his 
book,  and  when  he  writes  communicate  some- 
how, somewhere,  its  pulse  to  his  reader. 
Many  other  things  he  should  do,  but  this  he 
must  do  if  he  is  to  write  useful  criticism,  and 
we  will  never  forgive  him  if  he  fails,  unless, 
indeed,  the  book  has  no  pulse. 

Criticism,  if  we  may  conclude  with  a  home- 
ly example,  is  neither  the  scales  that  weigh 
nor  the  icing  that  sweetens,  but  the  yeast  that, 

for  readers,  leavens  the  lump.    A  good  re- 
109 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

viewer  must  have  cool  brains  and  a  warm 
heart.  He  must  have  enthusiasms  and  guard 
them,  and  his  likings  must  be  as  strong  as  his 
hates.  It  is  no  profession  for  a  hack. 

H.  S.  C. 


110 


PATRONS   AND   PATRONAGE 

THE  further  we  "progress"  into  the  twen- 
tieth century  the  easier  it  becomes  to  defend 
the  Middle  Ages  or  the  Renaissance.  There 
were  no  Saturday  Evening  Post  and  Hearst's 
Magazine  then  to  enrich  the  poor  writer, 
few  pots  of  gold  with  strings  to  them  to  be 
found  anywhere.  But  as  poets  and  play- 
wrights remind  us,  in  longing  accents,  there 
was  always  the  patron,  and  not  too  uncom- 
monly the  patron  of  taste. 

The  patron  of  the  arts  as  Chaucer  knew 
him,  and  Shakespeare,  and  Dr.  Johnson  we 
do  not  want  back  again.  It  is  true  that  with- 
out him  much  admirable  literature  would 

have    remained    unwritten    or   unpublished, 
111 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

since  the  times  provided  no  sure  sustenance 
for  most  men  of  letters  except  by  patronage. 
But  the  patron  was,  when  all  is  said,  a  feudal 
chief.  His  service  meant  loyalty  and  respect 
for  caste  then;  now  it  would  mean  servility. 
And  if  the  bought  pen  that  distributes  mod- 
ern propaganda  is  less  honorable  than  those 
earlier  writers  of  fawning  preface  and  ful- 
some dedication,  yet  we  would  gain  nothing 
by  making  flattery  as  profitable  as  it  was  in 
the  past. 

We  do  not  want  the  feudal  patron,  but 
there  is  still  need  and  opportunity  for  pa- 
tronage. Capital  now,  as  in  Elizabeth's  day, 
has  a  way  of  coyly  choosing  the  pockets  of 
a  minority  for  her  abiding  place ;  and  capital 
is  a  public  trust,  now  as  then,  when,  in  theory 
at  least,  it  was  so  held  and  so  employed. 
That  poets,  novelists,  dramatists  who  write 

finely  for  the  few,  instead  of  profitably  for 
112 


PATRONS   AND    PATRONAGE 

the  many,  should  be  kept  like  dogs,  servants, 
mistresses,  offends  our  democratic  sense,  and 
rightly.  We  cannot  accept  the  feudal  view- 
point because  our  world  is  not  feudal  and 
probably  never  again  will  be.  But  there  are 
better  ways  by  which  the  rich  man  can  grasp 
his  opportunity. 

Why  is  it  that  those  who  endow  colleges, 
churches,  societies,  foundations  with  such 
care  for  perpetuity,  and  such  precautions  to 
secure  usefulness,  should  have  given  so  little 
money  and  little  thought  to  the  arts?  It  is 
arguable  that  a  theatre  or  a  magazine  is  as 
good  a  subject  for  proper  endowment  as  an 
institution  for  scientific  research,  and  not  un- 
arguable that  it  might  be  a  more  interesting 
one.  Proper  endowment,  we  say.  That 
means  endowed  with  due  precaution  that 
money  shall  be  spent  for  expansion  and  at- 
tainment rather  than  mere  security.  "Root 

r  113  - 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

hog  or  die"  must  remain  somewhere  in  the 
prescription. 

And  what  safer  and  more  glorious  use 
could  be  made  of  superfluous  millions  than  to 
give  the  able  writer  what  in  his  early  ma- 
turity he  needs  beyond  all  earthly  things — 
the  precious  gift  of  time  ?  Art  is  the  greed- 
iest of  mistresses.  Time  she  does  not  nibble 
at;  she  devours.  Art  is  the  most  jealous  of 
mistresses.  In  youth  and  in  middle  or  later 
age  she  will  share  her  chosen  one  with  busi- 
ness, with  teaching,  with  law,  the  labors  of 
the  hack,  and  routine  of  every  description. 
But  there  is  a  year  or  two  or  more  when  she 
must  have  all  of  him — body  and  soul.  All 
his  thought,  all  his  time,  must  be  hers.  Some 
fortunates  can  yield,  more  must  resist  for 
lack  of  sustenance,  and  lead  a  double  life,  not 
richly  productive.  An  endowment  for  leisure 

— leisure  to  create,  for  those  who  have  proved 
114 


PATRONS   AND    PATRONAGE 

their  potentiality — how  has  such  an  obvious 
asset  for  a  nation  escaped  its  gift  of  millions? 
For  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  pa- 
tron did  not,  as  the  vulgar  suppose,  save 
places  at  his  table  for  needy  creators  merely 
because  he  hungered  for  praise.  That  is  too 
easy  an  explanation.  He  desired,  as  we  all 
desire,  a  more  interesting  life.  They  made 
life  more  interesting  for  him  by  giving  it 
beauty,  vividness,  and  significance — the  ser- 
vice of  literature.  Education  is  one  way  of 
making  life  more  valuable;  literature  is 
another.  Neither  should  be  pauperized  or 
driven  into  commercialism.  Both  (until  the 
millennium,  when  we  shall  be  paid  what  work 
is  worth  in  terms  of  true  value  to  the  human 
race ;  when  perhaps  not  so  many  as  now  will 
feel  the  burden  of  millions),  both  may  be 

helpfully  subsidized. 

H.  S.  C. 

115 


COTERIES 

THERE  is  gossip  in  literature  as  well  as  in 
politics.  If  it  is  no  more  reliable,  it  is  usual- 
ly less  malicious;  but  there  has  been  edge  to 
recent  discussion  of  those  mutual  admiration 
societies  unlimited,  called  coteries,  that  spe- 
cialize in  publicity  and  have  been  sometimes 
successful  in  making  men  and  women  fa- 
mous by  the  simple  device  of  mentioning 
them  at  least  three  times  a  day.  It  sounds 
like  the  Buddhist's  attempt  to  secure  the  at- 
tention of  his  god  by  numerous  twists  of  his 
prayer  wheel.  Yet,  whereas  the  Buddhist's 
success  is  perhaps  open  to  speculation,  abun- 
dant instances  prove  (so  it  is  said)  that  if  a 

group  of  friends  shout  each  the  other's  name 
117 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

at  the  great  god  Public  he  will  turn  his  hairy 
ear,  listen,  and  believe. 

In  London  two  coteries  are  said  to  dom- 
inate the  field  of  current  literature.  If  you 
write  for  fame  it  is  well  to  belong  to  one  or 
the  other  of  them — praise  your  friends  and 
be  praised  by  them,  damn  and  be  damned  by 
(a  kind  of  reverse  publicity)  your  enemies. 
But  as  the  rival  magazines  around  which  the 
two  coteries  centre  are  published  in  the  same 
street,  and  the  editors  thereof  frequently 
lunch  together,  there  is  always  the  possi- 
bility of  trading  votes,  or  of  a  union  against 
the  outsider. 

Are  there  literary  coteries  organized  for 
mutual  puffery  in  America?  If  so,  the  worse 
for  American  literature.  Are  there  groups 
of  friends  and  admirers  who  appreciate  good 
work  done  obscurely  and  endeavor  to  obtain 

recognition  for  it?     If  not,  the  fact  would 
118 


COTERIES 

be  surprising.  Let  those  who  believe  that 
literature  needs  no  advertisement  consider 
how  sound  literature  which  happens  not  to 
be  popular  is  to  be  brought  before  its  best 
readers  if  not  by  its  friends. 

The  publishers,  speaking  generally,  do  not 
do  it.  They  are  forced  by  what  are  believed 
to  be  the  rules  for  success  to  praise  all  their 
books  with  a  completeness  that  detracts  from 
emphasis ;  and  if  there  is  any  difference  to  be 
made,  then  they  must  praise  most  highly  the 
books  that  will  sell  most  readily.  They  dare 
not  (here  is  the  vicious  circle)  advertise  a 
newcomer  whose  sole  virtue  is  the  excellence 
of  his  art  until  he  has  already  been  so  much 
advertised  that  it  pays  to  advertise  him. 

The  general  magazines  will  not  do  it. 
They  must  play  for  circulation,  because  with- 
out circulation  they  cannot  print  as  many  and 

as  expensive  copies  as  our  magazines  must 
119 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

print  nowadays  to  be  regarded  as  respectable. 
They  will  play  up  their  own  coterie  of  es- 
tablished reputations,  but  new  writers  must 
pay  an  entrance  fee  in  the  shape  of  a  "story" 
that  will  please  everybody  or  have  it  paid  for 
them  in  reputation  made  by  their  friends. 

Critical  reviews  can  do  something  for 
sound  literature  by  obscure  writers  (whether 
new  or  old),  but  in  a  world  of  shrill  adver- 
tisement and  raucous  claims  of  everything 
for  everybody  they  can  do  relatively  little. 
Editors  are  fallible;  there  are  many  books; 
reviewers  are  no  more  trustworthy  than 
editors;  space  is  at  a  premium;  and  the  ob- 
scure by  its  very  obscurity  is  hard  to  distin- 
guish and  dangerous  to  praise.  The  duty 
and  the  privilege  of  such  reviews  are  clear. 
The  performance  will  always  be  lagging. 

We  should  therefore  be  charitable,  at  the 

least,  toward  the  coterie  here  in  America. 
120 


COTERIES 

The  poet  who  stops  his  public  reading  to 
speak  well  of  another's  poems  may  con- 
ceivably be  paying  a  debt,  but  more  probably 
is  moved  by  enthusiasm  for  good  poetry  that 
he  knows  and  his  hearers  do  not.  The 
novelist  who  praises  his  friend's  novel  may 
be  hoping  for  a  return  of  the  consideration, 
but  more  probably  is  stirred  by  a  sense  of 
merit  unrewarded.  There  Is  a  loyalty  to 
the  profession  among  authors  as  among 
journalists.  Both  classes  must  labor  against 
a  proprietary  public  that  will  accept  the  in- 
different in  preference  to  the  best,  the  cheap 
instead  of  the  expensive.  There  are  books, 
now  justly  famous  in  American  literature, 
that  would  never  have  been  published  if  the 
friends  of  the  authors  had  not  urged  their 
publication,  which  would  have  been  little 
read  if  some  group  of  admirers  (a  coterie) 

had  not  publicly  praised  them.     Something 
121 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

should  be   said  for  the  coterie.     It  is  de- 
plorable when  it  is  used  to  exploit  publicity. 

It  is  good  when  it  is  honest. 

H.  S.  C. 


122 


HOW  CLASSICS  ARE  MADE 

THE  question  at  this  writing  is  no  longer, 
What  is  a  classic?  The  publishers  settled 
that  long  ago.  A  classic  is  a  small,  dun 
book,  dog-eared,  with  to-morrow's  assign- 
ment written  on  the  fly  leaf.  Or  it  is  a  solid 
volume,  handsomely  upholstered,  of  the  kind 
that  is  described  as  8to  or  4to  and  obviously 
belongs  in  a  set. 

The  vital  question  is,  How  can  a  classic 
be  made?  For,  curiously  enough,  in  an  age 
supposedly  enamored  of  the  ephemeral, 
classics  are,  financially  speaking,  an  asset. 
They  constitute  the  surplus  of  a  publishing 
business,  and  a  reasonable  percentage  of  each 
new  generation  of  authors  must  be  classi- 
cized, added  to  surplus,  so  to  speak,  if  the 
123 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

business  is  to  remain  sound.  But  how  can  a 
classic  be  made? 

It  was  made  in  the  old  days  by  sweating 
brains  and  toiling  imagination,  until  thought 
and  experience  were  distilled  into  expression. 
It  won  its  way  to  recognition  or  it  met  instant 
approval:  it  was  damned  by  the  critics  or 
was  welcomed  by  them;  in  any  case,  it  sur- 
vived, and  grew  better  and  sweeter  as  the 
temporary  in  its  pages  blurred  and  the  per- 
manent gained  emphasis. 

But  publishers  nowadays  have  different 
ideas.  They  believe  in  speeding  up  the  slow 
processes  of  fame.  Sweating  labor,  toiling 
imagination,  the  slow  ripening  of  apprecia- 
tion, these  with  them  are  vieux  jeu,  useful  but 
not  indispensible.  Go  to,  they  say,  we  need  a 
classic.  And  their  procedure  is  not  unlike  the 
famous  generations  of  the  Bible ;  for  Adver- 
tisement begets  Publicity,  and  Publicity  be- 
124 


HOW    CLASSICS   ARE    MADE 

gets  Notoriety,  and  Notoriety  begets  Puffery, 
and  Puffery  begets  Fame,  and  Fame  begets  a 
classic,  which  lives  in  the  publisher's  list  from 
generation  unto  generation. 

There  must  be  a  seed  of  Jacob  from  which 
all  the  prodigious  growth  may  spring;  there 
must  be  a  good  book,  or,  preferably,  books; 
but  with  sound  seed,  good  manure,  and  a 
proper  cultivation  anything  is  possible. 

The  experiment  begins  (to  change  the  fig- 
ure) with  a  gentle  snow  of  press  notices, 
whispering:  "He  is  great";  "he  is  famous"; 

"Professor approves  him" ;  "the 

Review  ranks  him  with  Fielding";  "the  Pres- 
ident is  reading  him."  Follows  a  blast  from 
the  middle  page  of  some  weekly:  "Did  you 

know  that  G was  an  American  classic? 

Read  what  they  sayl" 

Then  silence  for  a  while  to  give  the  essay- 
ists, sluggish  folk,  time  to  turn  uneasily  in 
125 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

their  desk  chairs,  hear  that  another  writer  is 
worthy  of  "serious  attention,"  and  write. 
Essayists  are  the  priests  of  classic  making. 
They  pour  the  sacred  oil.  But  much  is 
spilled,  and  much  of  it  is  water. 

Then,  by  prearrangement,  come  mighty 
configurations  on  the  rear  pages  of  nationally 
circulated  journals;  family  interiors  with  chil- 
dren in  process  of  being  cultivated,  bookcases 

full   of  the   works   of   G ,   pictures   of 

G in  boxes,  pictures  of  his  heroes,  his 

heroines,  in  characteristic  attitudes.  Also 
riddles,  as:  "If  you  were  caught  between 
floors  in  an  elevator  with  a  Bolshevik  and  a 

Vampire  what  would  you  do?    Read  G 

and  learn  what  Joseph  did."  And  then  sub- 
scription offers,  by  sets,  with  a  guarantee  that 
a  signature  brings  you  intellectual  happiness 
for  life. 

Last  state  of  all,   some  one  lectures  on 
126 


HOW    CLASSICS   ARE    MADE 

G to  the  French  Academy;  he  is  re- 
viewed (with  gross  errors  of  locality  and  a 
misspelling  of  his  middle  name)  in  the  Lon- 
don Athena,  and  the  Literary  Digest  reports 
him  as  having  been  heard  of  in  Oxford 
(though  not  in  the  Bodleian).  The  classic 
is  made. 

The  publishers,  to  tell  truth,  are  often 
right  (let  us  say  almost  every  other  time)  in 
their  selection  of  material  for  classics.  And 
since  publishers  are  not  mere  traders  of  the 
printed  page,  but  gentlemen  at  least  as  cul- 
tivated as  critics  and  writers  of  editorials, 
this  is  not  surprising.  Even  the  much- 
maligned  publicity  agent  knows  a  good  book 
when  he  sees  one. 

I  do  not,  as  Caesar  remarked,  much 
dislike  the  matter,  but  the  manner  of  their 
speech.  It  is  not  what  they  do.  Heaven 

knows,  literature,  and  American  literature, 
127 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

when  it  is  good  (great,  one  need  not  say) 
deserves  all  the  honest  advertising  that  can 
be  given  it.  It  is  the  way  they  do  it.  If 
some  corn-fed  writer  of  the  Middle  West, 
some  chronicler  of  the  deserted  New  Eng- 
land farm,  some  Californian,  brilliant  with 
the  white  light  of  the  high  Sierras,  has  writ- 
ten well,  has  made  a  bid  for  a  popularity  last- 
ing beyond  his  first  editions,  let  us  not  be 
niggardly  in  critical  praise  or  advertisement. 
But  overpraise  will  not  insure  him  for  poster- 
ity, and  notoriety  brings  its  reaction.  En- 
tered to  the  sound  of  horns  and  trumpets 
under  surplus,  he  may  prove  to  be  watered 
stock,  a  bond  with  no  security  behind  it. 

Publishers  should  be  prevented,  under 
pain  of  loss  of  copyright,  from  using  the 
Word  "classic"  except  at  the  equinoxes,  and 
never  for  any  author  born  after  the  mid 

nineteenth  century. 

H.  S.  C. 
128 


PERNICIOUS  LITERATURE! 

A  VERY  plausible  case  may  be  made  out  for 
the  perniciousness  of  literature.  Philoso- 
phically considered,  of  what  do  the  great 
books  we  read  for  our  education  consist?  Of 
ideals  belonging  to  a  culture  different  from 
ours;  of  a  morality  based  upon  different  con- 
ditions; of  standards  of  chivalry,  romance, 
class  duty,  which,  however  applicable  once, 
for  us,  at  best,  are  arbitrary;  of  taboos,  re- 
ligious, ethical,  social,  which  have  lost  their 
raison  d'etre. 

And  of  what  do  the  good  books  of  this 
generation  fundamentally  consist?  Of  at- 
tempts to  impose  upon  the  imagination  of 

the  reader  the  ideas  of  contemporary  life 
129 


SATURDAY    PAPERS 

achieved  by  some  partial  observer;  of  an 
imperfect  philosophy  of  living  stereotyped  in 
its  imperfections  and  circulated  widely. 

The  result  (so  it  is  said)  is  a  cramping  of 
natural  development.  Facts  we  feed  and 
grow  upon:  but  false  ideas,  stale  principles, 
illusory  ideals  (like  Scott's  pseudo-mediaeval- 
ism)  clog  the  digestion,  set  up  mental  aches 
and  pains,  cause  abnormalities,  and  check 
growth  or  thwart  it.  We  have  to  live  in 
the  present;  but  even  the  new  books  we  read 
would  persuade  us  to  think  like  1919  or 
1920;  indeed,  the  prejudices  and  preposses- 
sions of  these  books  belong  roughly  a  decade 
earlier.  If  we  take  to  the  classics,  Boswell 
argues  a  fantastic  feudalism;  Shakespeare  a 
departed  aristocracy;  Milton  a  lost  theology; 
Keats  lives  in  a  world  where  industrialism 
does  not  exist.  We  may  enjoy  their  books, 

nourish  our  imaginations  there,  escape  from 
130 


PERNICIOUS   LITERATURE 

life  as  it  is.  But  we  are  marked  by  the  ex- 
perience; we  are  held  back;  we  lose  our  men- 
tal freedom. 

And  therefore  imaginative  literature  is 
pernicious,  and  the  better  it  is,  the  worse 
for  us ! 

There  is  no  escaping  this  argument  by 
denying  it  totally.  It  is  through  books  which 
are  the  containers  of  tradition  that  the  dead 
hand  of  the  past  reaches  out  to  clutch.  The 
merest  popular  novel  in  gay  slip  covers  when 
analyzed  reveals  a  complex  of  soul-numbing 
ingredients  that  is  perfectly  appalling.  Ideas 
of  honor  drifted  down  from  mediaeval 
France;  vague  religious  beliefs,  part  Chris- 
tian, part  Hebrew,  part  Mithraic;  concep- 
tions of  a  "gentleman"  and  a  "lady"  which 
belong  to  early  Victorian  literature ;  a  moral 
code  which  came  from  Switzerland  via  Scot- 
land and  Ulster;  neo-romantic  sentimental- 
131 


SATURDAY   PAPERS 

ism  left  over  from  the  40's — this  is  just  a 
beginning. 

Do  not  think  that  you  can  read  a  book, 
even  a  bad  book,  without  encountering  con- 
ventions of  thought  which  are  as  incongruous 
in  this  age  as  herds  of  bison  or  knights  in 
armor.  You  take  your  sacred  individuality 
in  hand  every  time  you  open  a  book.  You 
never  shut  one  without  having  drunk  in  tradi- 
tion with  your  draught. 

All  this  is  true,  even  if  somewhat  exag- 
gerated in  statement.  But  why  have  we  be- 
come so  arrogant  about  sacred  individuali- 
ties? Since  when  has  a  man  ceased  to  take 
his  ease  in  his  Shakespeare — which  he  reads 
for  the  exalting  of  his  spirit,  and  for  the  love 
of  life,  and  for  laughter  and  beauty — be- 
cause he  fears  corruption  from  some  slant 
on  the  mob,  some  hint  of  a  trace  of  a  moral 

code  no  longer  workable !    Since  when  have 
132 


PERNICIOUS   LITERATURE 

we  feared  to  share  the  spiritual  experiences 
of  our  ancestors  (and  this  is  literature)  lest 
these  should  persuade  us  to  live,  think,  be- 
lieve like  them!  But  if  we  have  any  indi- 
viduality worth  considering  we  cannot  be  like 
them ;  and  our  thoughts  will  be  poor  thoughts, 
and  our  life  a  thin  one,  if  we  are  afraid  of 
our  past.  Only  a  coward  thinks  that  litera- 
ture is  pernicious  because  it  is  old. 

H.  S.  C. 


133 


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